Portal: Companioned
by AdamF
Summary: Glados is back with an all new subject and all new toys. But this time the subject won't be alone - and doesn't plan on being Glados' guinea pig without a fight.
1. Awakening

When he woke up, his knowledge consisted of only two things: One, he knew he was himself, although he didn't know his name or even a vague idea of what "himself" looked like; and two, that wherever he was was very white. And very bright.

"Dead?" He muttered to himself as he raised a hand to his forehead, instinctively checking if he was cold of not without even realizing it.

The sound of his own voice made his brain swim. He squeezed his eyelids closed and grabbed the sides of his head. Something reminiscent of a headache, but not quite it, rang out from the middle of his skull.

"Ah." He shook his head and opened his eyes wide and became aware of a third thing. He was laying down on something comfortable. After a quick check he discovered it was in fact a large white bed. A large _bright_ bed.

"A large bright bread." He said aloud, mispronouncing the word _bed_. "I knew I was going to do that." He said to no one and had a sudden moment of clarity. He kind of understood who he was in a foggy sort of way. Like remembering an old TV show character - not a star, but someone important enough. His facial features rose up to the surface of his brain and began forming a picture of himself in his head - and as they did his left hand instinctively reached for a spot behind his ear. His fingers traced a small scar that ran in a semi-circle behind it.

"I know that scar…"

A name began to form in his head, but the letters were coming to him slowly, like the numbers came to you on the Pennsylvania Lottery drawing.

_Pennsylvania. I'm from Pennsylvania._

A-L-L-A-N.

"And now for the power ball drawing… Allan? God that's a stupid name." He said sitting up. Nothing on him hurt as he did so, which was a good sign, but nothing changed either. That meant it wasn't a dream. There was something weird going on. And he was Allan… the Pennsylvanian.

The room he was in was about the same size his bedroom on Cooper street was.

_That's right. I grew up on Cooper street. I'm… in my twenties. Twenty-one? No… that's being generous. I'm twenty-three… or four._

He pondered his true age for a bit longer before settling on twenty-three and getting back to observing the room. It _was_ the same size as his little green room from Cooper Street, but it had been soaked in an eye-straining white. He was living in a giant eggshell, out of the side of which was a window.

_A window!_

He slid off the bed and made two more discoveries; One, he was barefoot because the floor was cold; And two, that he was dressed in an ugly prison-orange jump suit. A cold splash of panic hit him. _Was_ he a prisoner somewhere?

"Allan the Pennsylvanian convict?" He said aloud, studying the words to see if they rang a bell or even made sense to him. "No… I was a student. A good one too."

He ignored the ugly clothing for the time being and made his way to the window. Somehow he miscalculated the height of it from his spot on the bed, because it was just above his head. He looked around for something to stand on, his eyes landing on an appropriately colored white chair that was at the foot of the bed. He dragged it over and peered outside.

Clear blue sky and swollen, puffy clouds peered back at him and nothing more. He looked down and didn't see anything, he looked up and saw a replica of below. It made him a little light-headed. Either he was in a very tall building, or he really was dead.

"Dead…" He whispered the word, too afraid to say it much louder.

"Please do not kill yourself." A voice came so sudden and loud it caused Allan to disorient and lose his balance, stumbling before knocking his head and shoulder of the wall and tumbling off the chair to the floor below. His elbow flared in pain as he landed on his side.

"Do not even think about jumping out of the window, you can not fit your whole body out of it anyway."

The voice again, this time he was a bit more prepared and was actually able to hear it. The tone in it. It was… a robot? No, it was somehow human. A female, in fact. The way she spoke though was strange, as if she had just learned the English language, but somehow learned it wrong, learned it from a computer.

"Hello?" The word escaped his lips in a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hello?" The time his voice was loud and clear, it filled the little room and hung there waiting for a reply.

"Hello." One came.

The voice was definitely female. She seemed to be over-pronouncing every word she spoke though, not to mention the fact that it sounded like she was speaking out of a broken voice modulator. Behind all the strangeness though there was a real person in it… he could almost make out some emotion…

"Are you still there?" The voice questioned, seeming to come from very inch of the room at the same time.

"Where… where am I?" It was the first question that came to his head.

"Welcome to the Aperture Science Testing Facility. You have chosen, or been chosen, to participate in-"

"I didn't _choose_ anything!" He cut the voice off, finding strength in anger as he rose to his feet. He stared at the ceiling, being as it was the only place it made sense for him to stare.

"You have chosen, or _been_ chosen," The voice continued, putting a slightly annoyed emphasis on the word _been_, "to participate in the further development and evolution of our scientific studies."

"What the hell is going on." He said to himself in disbelief, grabbing the sides of his head and getting little fistfuls of hair. "Is this real?"

"Yes." The voice answered, even though he was talking to himself. This time he didn't hear the woman inside it. He didn't hear any emotion behind the sound. All he heard this time was a cold answer told to him by a machine that had him at it's mercy. He had spent all of three minutes in this place and he already hated it. Hated the machine, hated the room, hated the ugly orange jump suit. He was just Allan from Pennsylvania… and he wanted to go home.


	2. Enrichment

"So… what did I do?" Allan asked, he had chosen a nice spot on the floor in the corner of his room to sit on. It was there that he had thought things over, and _there_ that he had come to the conclusion he had to have done something to deserve what was happening to him.

"Do?" The voice echoed. "I do not understand what you mean."

"Why am I here… why me? Why!?"

"Your emotion is negative."

"What? What does that even mean!?" Allan demanded, throwing his hands up in frustration. He had had enough of the damn voice already. He wanted to see a person. A _real_ person.

"You should try to maintain a neutral emotion throughout the duration of your stay. For the best possible results that is."

"A neutral emotion? What emotion is this?" He asked, standing up and suddenly throwing the middle finger at the ceiling. "Huh? What's this tell you!?" He threw up a second middle finger now, and began walking around the room pointing them in every direction.

"You have ten fully functional fingers, I do not understand why you are only showing off two of them." The voice stated, oblivious to any insult.

Allan dropped his arms to his sides and let out a sigh. "I hope someone is enjoying this. I really do. I hope someone is watching this through a little monitor and having a ball with it."

"That is dependant on how well you perform in the Enrichment Center."

"Perform?"

"Yes. Your first test is to leave this room."

Before the voice even finished its sentence, a panel of the wall on the far side of the room slid upwards, revealing a section of white hallway behind it. Allan at first was shocked, but quickly pulled through it thinking that it might be his only chance of escape. He stumbled to his feet and rushed towards the exposed exit. Inches from it he half-expected it to slam shut in front of his face, giving him just a taste of freedom before stripping it from him.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

He pushed himself through the opening so quickly, he accidentally tripped over a slight lip in the floor and went tumbling face first with his arms sprawled out before him. His chin bounced off the cool linoleum floor.

"What a great job you did Subject 33107. You had a second place time for that particular test."

Allan wondered what she meant by 'second place time'. He also wondered what 'Subject 33107' was all about. He didn't ask about either though, he was out of the room and had to keep moving. He might just be free after all.

The hallway was long and narrow and white. That was all. He moved down it as quick as he could, happy to put as much space as possible between him and the room. And the voice. Sneaking a glance over his shoulder, he saw the opening from which he came was gone. He didn't care, no need to get back into that place after all.

"Stop moving."

The voice. It had followed him somehow, and was now louder then ever and seemingly all around him again. He ignored it and kept on going.

He SLAMMED into a wall face first that had appeared from almost nowhere. The hit put black spots in front of his face and sent him slowly tumbling backwards. He fell on his ass.

"You will have to get better at following my directions 33107. That is if you hope to pass all your tests at the Enrichment Center."

Allan cursed at the walls, meaning it for the voice.

Suddenly a panel of the wall to his right slid open, revealing a shoebox sized compartment. Allan sat up rubbing his head and peered at it's shadowy inside. There was something shiny in it.

"Before you enter the Enrichment Center, you will need to put these on." The voice stated.

Allan squinted upwards untrustingly, but decided he didn't have much choice but to do what she said.

_She? No, that things not human… even if it _does_ sound like one._

He began reaching inside, but the inside came to him instead. It slid outwards without a sound. It was a platform the size of a lunch tray, and on it were two of the most bizarre-looking objects he'd ever seen. They looked like those flexible desk lights he'd seen in catalogues, the ones you could clamp anywhere and give yourself light., but instead of light bulbs, there were white and blue ovals on the ends. They sort of looked like headphones.

"How do I… put these on?" He asked, taking one in his hands and examining it.

As soon as he finished the question, a section of the wall above the compartment began to give off a gentle glow. On it was revealed a picture of a little man, represented by a black stick-figure, putting the device on. It was a three step process, neatly outlined in the example picture.

He looked it over for a bit before deciding he had it. He took the one in his hand and placed it on the floor beside him. He leaned forward and rolled up the legs of his jump suit, and then grabbed the object. A switch was behind one of the headphone-looking pieces that - from looking at the picture - he knew he had to push. When he did, it split in half like a mouth. He brought it to just below his knee and place his calf inside it, and before he did anything else, the mouth closed over his leg snugly.

"What kind of stuff do you _have_ in this place?" He asked, surprised at how futuristic the little device was.

"Please put the other one on now."

"Alright, alright." He repeated the process on the other leg and stood up. Nothing felt truly different. The clamps on his legs felt snug without being too tight and the flexible, bendy things that came down from them stopped perfectly at the floor, as if the things were built with him in mind. "I don't understand why I had to put these on."

"When you fall, make sure you land on your feet."

"What?"

The floor gave away beneath him and Allan was falling. He let out a scream and desperately tried clinging to something with his flailing arms, but all he felt was the smooth cold walls of the shaft he was now plummeting down.

_She killed me! She killed me!_

The thought raced through his head as he fell further and further, and just when he thought he was never going to land and finally get his miserable end, he came through the shaft into a large, open chamber. He could see the ground below him racing upwards fast. His instinct was to lean forward and put out his hands, but remembered the voice telling him to land on his feet. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath preparing for whatever fate he was about to meet.

He landed.

"You are a truly remarkable subject 33107."

The voice. If he was dead, he was still hearing that voice. Even in death!

He dared to open one eye. It looked like he was standing. It felt like he was standing too, but it wasn't possible. He never even felt himself land.

"How…" He whispered as he opened his other eye and took a look around.

"Welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center."


	3. Allan

The room was huge. Above him was 20 feet of nothing, and then a ceiling. Below him a floor - one that he had miraculously dropped onto from over a hundred feet up and landed without so much as a thud. And all around Allan was the emptiest room he had ever seen. Large squares of white panels covered every inch of it, and in the middle of it all he stood. He felt small.

"These things on my feet… they saved me?" He asked. He found it funny how quickly he slipped into conversation with, essentially, no one.

"That is correct. You are a speedy learner 33107." The voice was sure-enough in the room, still seeming to come from everywhere… and nowhere.

"Allan." He said casually, tired of hearing her (_it!_) refer to him as an area code.

"I don't understand that word at all."

"My name. It's Allan."

"That is very interesting" She said, sounding possibly the most un-interested he'd ever heard someone sound. "At the Aperture Science Enrichment Center you are 331-"

"Yea I got it! I just… want to be called Allan, OK? I feel like an object when you call me by numbers."

There was an uncomfortably long silence after he said that, which kind of made him feel a bit uneasy. Did she (_it!!_) think of him as an object? Just a thing that had to serve its purpose and be discarded.

Discarded.

He didn't care much for that word at all, and the real threat of danger - which had probably been looming above him all along, slightly out of his mental reach - of the place finally set in. He was _truly _at her (_it's_) mercy.

"I mean… if you don't mind calling me that." He said weakly, rubbing the back of his neck with his palm.

"You are Allan then." She said suddenly. "You can call me a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System."

He let out a long breath. He was actually thankful to hear her voice for once. At least he wasn't left alone in this place. That might be worse than… discard.

"That's… interesting." He said, unsure of how to respond. "Genetic Liferform and Disk Operating System. Is that an Irish name?"

His nervous attempt at a joke fell flat into another silence.

"Uh… How about I call you Glados? You know… after the letters."

"Call me what you like Allan. You must continue with your tests now."

"I get to go home when this is over right?" He didn't want to ask the question, it felt _bad_ somehow to ask it. Maybe he just feared the answer too much. Regardless, it had to be said. He needed to hear it before he did one more thing in this place. There was a long pause like the first one, at the end of which came-

"Yes."

He didn't like the way that yes sounded. Too short, too simple and too late. He swallowed a lump in his throat and took a deep breath. It didn't sit well with him, but he'd have to deal with it for now. He planned on doing another of her little tests before asking any more questions. Didn't want to upset her after all. Not Glados.

"So what do you want me to do?"

A sound that he could only think of as two sheets rubbing together came from his left. He glanced over just in time to see a panel of the floor rising up. It rose to around his height and stopped, leaving a six-foot-tall pillar in the center of the room. Slightly above the middle of it was a portion which had been cut out, allowing him to look straight through it. He didn't look through it though, he looked into it, and what he saw was a brand new device.

"Sunglasses? You want me to wear sunglasses?" He asked Glados, picking up the bizarre-looking pair of shades. They were like any other household sunglasses, but where regular pairs would wrap around the tops of your ears, these seemed to pinch the middle of your nose to stay in place.

"Place the device on your face. Please do not try to swallow the device as if you do, the Aperture Science Enrichment Center will take no responsibility for your actions and you will choke." She answered.

He gave a confused look before shrugging off the strange reply and sliding them onto the bridge of his nose. They, like the leg-shocks, seemed to fit perfectly, once again as if they'd been built with him in mind.

"This is test model 9B77. Congratulations Allan. You are the first person to test them."

"Congratulations yourself Glados, you've created sunglasses. Although I think someone may have beat you to it. These will be a big hit with earless folks though I'm sure." Allan joked, although he wasn't really amused. He was actually a bit disappointed, hoping to see something cool. Like the leg-shocks. "So what… do these see into the futu-

He turned to his left and began to take a step forward when he noticed there was no _floor_ to his left. He took a sharp breath in shock and tried to take back the step. His leg wobbled and his head wobbled with it and then he got hit with a rush of panic and before he knew it he'd stumbled right up to the edge of the pit that had now formed.

"Ugh." Was all he could manage, and even _that_ came out quiet and pathetic. His arms pin-wheeled to try and save his balance. The deep, endless pit stared up at him waiting - waiting to swallow him inside of it and never spit him out again.

Finally his weight shifted backwards and he stumbled away from the edge. Away from the _pit_.

"What? Whe- … Why did -? Wha?" He attempted to form a sentence.

"I would like to hear the ends of those sentences sometime. Now please stand up and partake in your first Aperture Science Companion Test."

"What?" He still didn't have his head on straight, unable to get over how close he had been to walking into a hole that he couldn't see the bottom of.

"Have you lost your hearing 33107? Do you need an Aperture Science hearing aid?"

"Allan! And no!" Allan yelled standing up, the anger helped flush away the shock.

He looked around the room now for the first time since putting on the sunglasses. There were pits _all over _the floor. Some were only as big as one of the panels (which was a four by four square), but some stretched across the entire room in a line. There didn't seem to be patterns to the formations - just random holes scattered about. He began to turn in place, taking in everything around him, but when he had made a one-eighty degree turn, he stopped dead.

"Hey!" He called out, almost running forward, but realizing he couldn't exactly just GO forward. Holes were still scattered everywhere. He started dodging them, zigging left and zagging right to avoid them he made his way to the other side of the room. An excitement came over him that he hadn't felt since he woke up. A real emotion. A tightening in his stomach that made his eyes widen and his breathing pick up pace. On the other side of a now-visible piece of glass was another human.


	4. Madison

"Are you… are you _real_?" The question seemed stupid in Allan's head and didn't change much when he shouted it out loud. He was standing in front of a piece of glass that split the room he was in into two. On his side was himself, a whole bunch of pits in the floor, and the pair of dumb-looking sunglasses he was wearing - which didn't seem to be sunglasses at all, but some sort of strange x-ray vision glasses. On the other side was her.

She stood in the middle of a chamber that was identical to his, making him think it was really just one big room split in two. She wore the same prison-garb he was, and even had the same leg-shocks wrapped around her calves. If she _was_ real, she was in the same boat that he was.

"Hello?" She answered, turning her head towards his direction but not really looking _at_ him.

"She's real…" Allan whispered to himself, staring at her through the glass. "You're real!" He shouted at her, overcome with joy.

"I- …I know!" She shouted back, throwing her arms up. A look came over her face that showed as much joy as he was feeling. "You are too?" She questioned, a cautious look replaced her joyful one.

"Yea! I mean… can you see me?"

"No. It sounds like you're coming from behind this wall."

"I _am_ behind that wall." He confirmed enthusiastically, waving his arms to show his position before quickly realizing how pointless the gesture was and turning a deep red. "I mean… come over to the wall, it's not even a wall! It's glass!"

He saw that same cautious look come over her. He didn't blame her, after all he could see her, she couldn't see him. He rapped his knuckles against the glass to prove it.

"Do you hear it? It's just glass."

She hesitated another moment before finally beginning to move towards him. As she came closer into his view, Allan got a more detailed look at her. She looked short, particularly so in her bare feet, but as she neared, he saw she was only a little shorter than himself. She had shoulder-length light-brown hair that was tucked behind her ears. Her sky-blue eye's seemed to meet his for a moment and-

Allan swallowed and felt a warm rush come through his body. He suddenly realized she was very pretty, which - even under the bizarre circumstances - made him feel nervous. Pretty girls were never Allan's strength.

She reached the other side of the glass and looked it up and down. He took a step to his left so he was in front of her and waved his hand. She did not react to it, which actually made him feel a bit less nervous.

"This is glass?" She asked.

"Y-Yea. It's just… glass." He answered, tapping his knuckles against it again.

She looked where he had tapped, and brought her hand to nearly the exact same spot on the opposite side. She touched the glass with her fingers and ran a line down it.

"See?" He asked. She didn't say anything for a moment, making him think that maybe her side somehow _wasn't_ glass and that was to be the end of their new-found friendship, but then she smiled and nodded her head.

"Yea! It really is! I wonder how we're speaking through it though?"

It was a good question, one he hadn't thought of. He leaned back and scoped out the whole wall of glass for some holes. He found one, and only one, right at the very top where the wall met the ceiling. It was directly above them both, placing it directly in the middle of the room. The whole place seemed to have a very symmetrical feel to it, from the room he woke up in to the hallway outside it to the chamber they were in at the moment. It was funny, but it was a little scary to.

"Right above us. There's a shoebox-sized hole."

She looked up and slowly began nodding.

"Yea… I didn't notice before, but that's definitely where your voice seems to be coming from."

She looked back down, and once again he felt as if she was looking him right in the eyes, although it was an impossibility.

"Hey," She started. "Why can you see this stuff and I can't? Do you work here?"

"No. No!" He felt compelled to say it twice it was so wrong. "I've got glasses."

She nodded her head and looked a little confused.

"I mean… like, _x-ray_ glasses."

She squinted.

"You don't believe me?" He asked.

"Well… if it were different circumstances maybe I wouldn't , but…" She motioned downwards with her hands. The leg-shocks were sitting there quietly wrapped around her calves. "I don't know _what_ to believe right now."

"Yea… I feel the same way." He replied honestly and felt a moment of comfort come over him, thankful in a way that someone else was experiencing what he was. "I'm Allan by the way."

"Madison." She said with a half-smile and raised her right hand. "Nice to meet you, I guess."

He nodded his head, although the gesture was wasted on no one, and grinned a goofy grin that was fortunately _seen_ by no one. She really was pretty. The voice he heard next was not.

"The Aperture Science Companion Test is beginning. Good luck."

Glados. Her voice was like daggers in his ears.

"Did you hear her? The robot woman?" Madison asked, her face a mixture of interest and fear.

"Glados?"

"Who?"

Before Allan could answer that, a loud noise came rumbling from his chamber. A tremor in the floor made him nearly lose his balance before steadying himself against the glass wall. He looked through to Madison, who was balanced the same way.

"Are you OK?" He instinctively asked. She nodded. Behind her, Allan saw that the floor had become like his - littered with pits and holes. He shot a look behind him and saw all of the holes on his side were gone.

"What was that?" Madison asked, releasing the wall and turning around to face her room.

"Holes!" Allan answered. Madison turned her head to face him, and he saw she was only a step away from walking right into one. "HOLES! STOP!" He shouted, slamming the glass with both fists. She crouched a bit and put out her arms cautiously.

"What?" She asked, the nervousness cracking in her voice.

"There were holes in my room over here. Only… I couldn't see them without the glasses. They're gone now. Now they're on _your_ side."

Allan saw her expression fill with fear and confusion and felt more helpless than he'd felt since he woke up.

Another tremor in the floor sent them both rocking. Allan looked around in both of their rooms, but didn't see any apparent changes. For a moment they both stood - separated by a wall of glass - in complete silence, waiting for something that neither of them had a good feeling about.

Their feelings were right.

The floor on Madison's side began to disappear right before Allan's eyes. He watched in horror as the panels adjacent to the walls began to drop away into nothing, leaving a trail of black pits heading towards the center of the room in a slow, but relentless, way. The room was literally swallowing itself whole from the outside inwards. He looked where Madison stood. In only seconds she would be falling - falling down into an invisible (to her) pit and it would be _his_ fault.

"Madison! You have to move… you have to get to the middle of the room but do NOT go towards it from where you are right now!"

"What? What's going on?" She asked, seeming to be on the verge of tears.

"Your room is getting smaller! The floor its giving away - SHRINKING away! I can see it happening! You have to trust me!"

He saw her take a hard swallow and look at the floor all around her before looking up at him and nodding her head.

"OK, go towards your right about four steps!" The edge of the floor had moved up to only a few inches from her feet. She wasn't going to make it. "Go! GO NOW! GO!"

She did, stepping just to the left of a large hole in the floor that was between her and the center of the room.

"Towards the middle! GO!"

She lifted her foot to go forwards and the blackness swallowed the spot it left immediately.

"STOP!" He shouted at her. She did so as abruptly as possible and glanced back at him with a 'what now?' look on her face. He was wondering the same thing. Between her and the center of the room were a series of pits littered about with no obvious pattern to them. There was even a large pillar near the center of the room that had appeared when the holes did - he knew she wouldn't be able to see that either. There was no time to guide her through, by the time he would be done with all the instructions, she'd be a goner. Thinking quick, he glanced up at the communication hole at the top of the wall, then back at her.

"OK, Madison, do you hear where my voice is coming from?" He asked, taking a few steps back from the glass.

She hesitated a moment before answering, "Yea."

"Watch that spot carefully, I'm throwing the glasses over."

She turned towards him and nodded, getting her hands in front of her for the catch. He didn't have much time, the pit she'd maneuvered around was completely gone now, and the line of black nothing was creeping towards her feet at a steady pace. He took a deep breath and eyed down the hole. Slipping his fingers around the frames of the glasses, he pulled them down slightly to eye up the spot without them. It was going to have to be a blind throw, and it had to be now. He pulled them in front of his eyes once more to get a steady fix on the spot and then brought them back in his hand like a baseball player and side-armed them towards it. They flew at the wall. They flew _through_ the wall.

"Madison! Did you get them!?"

No answer.

"Madison!? MADISON!" He called for her. His reply was cold, dead silence. His arms dropped to his sides, his mouth fell agape. For a moment he was left in complete shock, until _she_ popped into his head. "GLADOS!" He spun around and stared at the ceiling. "GLADOS! What happened!?"

"Communications have been discontinued with subject 33106. Opening communications with subject 33108."

"What? What happened to Madison!? Damn it Glados, you answer me!"

There was a moment of silence, then -

"Hey! Hey you!" A voice came from the opposite side of the room. Seeming to come from… behind the wall.

Allan squinted in that direction, mouth slightly hanging open. That wasn't Madison's voice, and it wasn't Glados' either. It was a new person. A guy… a guy with a slightly raspy tone to his voice. Allan looked at the side his voice was coming from, then back at the glass wall - which was now just a wall again - that Madison was behind.

"Madison!?" He called to her once more.

"Hey man! Over here!" The voice called. Allan looked towards it again, almost said something, but opted to just throw a 'shoo' gesture. Turning back, he ran his hands along the glass wall. He put his ear to it. He heard nothing.

"Hey! I know you can hear me! I seen you look at me!" The voice was beginning to get as agitating as Glados'. He didn't care about whoever was over on the other side of _that_ wall. He wanted - he _needed_ - to know what happened to Madison. He could have gotten her killed and he didn't even know it!

Suddenly a thought jumped into his head that made his skin crawl and his stomach turn upside down. He shot his head towards the wall on the opposite side of the room.

"Glasses." He said and started running towards the other side. "Glasses!" He shouted when he was halfway.

"What? How do you know-

"Throw them over!" Allan demanded, stopping just short of the wall. "Throw them through the hole. It should be right up there!" He pointed up to the spot where the hole in the glass was on the other side of the room. "'Bout the size of a shoebox?" He asked, already nodding his head.

"Hey man… how do you know all this stuff? Are you part of the experiment? What's going on here!? Why am I here!"

"No! I've just… I've been through this. Just a few moments ago. _I_ had the glasses. _I _was helping the other person-"

As if on cue, the same rumbling tremor shook the entire floor as it did the last time. Now, however, Allan knew the holes had just transferred from New Guy's room to his own. The second tremor would cue up the floor to start falling away.

"Listen… I know this is confusing to you, but I need those glasses! If you don't throw them over I am going to _die_. You understand that?" Allan pleaded with the guy.

"Hold it right there. First off, if you know so much you answer me! Why am I here! Why did you kidnap me? To run your twisted experiments on me? To make me a LAB RAT!?"

Kidnap? Allan hadn't even thought of that. Had _he_ been kidnapped himself? Everything before waking up in that little white room was like the tail end of a dream - layered behind a thick wall of fog where only certain bits and pieces of memories could shine through.

"I…I don't-

The second tremor went off, nearly knocking Allan to his ass it was so violent. A cold bucket of fear spilled over him, and suddenly the room looked more like the hand of death than an actual room. All around him he could feel the blackness coming, waiting to rip him down into an endless fall. A claustrophobic hand started tightening around his throat.

"The glasses… please." He said, his voice small in his own head. He was subconsciously taking baby steps away from the wall.

"Alright man… holy god the hole floors disappearing! I'll throw them over… jesus christ."

Allan nodded and looked up, anxiously waiting with his hands out in front of him.

"Coming over!" The guy shouted.

The glasses popped through the wall, just where Allan thought they would. They knocked off the ceiling and quickly dropped to the floor in front of him, just out of his reach. He dropped to his knees and leaned forward. The rim of the glasses touched his fingertips, and then they were gone - sunken into the floor like magic.

"Buh!?" The sound the came out of him wasn't quite a word, nor was it an expression. It was just kind of _there_, left to hang in the silence of his own shock.

He swallowed a lump in his throat and came to the realization that the glasses were gone. He had to accept that. He did _not_ have to accept, however, that he was to. He stood up and looked around him. Cold sweat ran down his hot body. Before he had a chance to think, the floor beneath his left foot gave away. He threw his body weight in the opposite direction, looking down just in time to see the bizarre sight of his leg sticking halfway into the floor. He landed with a thud on his side, but quickly scrambled to his hands and knees and lurched forward. He got two, stumbling steps before walking off a cliff - or at least that's what it felt like.

"AH!" He screamed as he fell forward. His upper body felt onto a ledge - his chin smashed the ground and send a bolt of pain ripping through his head. He felt his legs and feet dangling beneath the floor, hovering above his possible demise. He took a few heavy breaths as he tried crawling forward using his elbows. Below him, his foot caught something, which he immediately used as leverage to launch himself upwards a bit more. He almost had his stomach over the edge of the drop-off when whatever his foot was on disappeared, knocking him off balance and causing him to slump down lower into the pit. Another second or two and the ledge he was so desperately clinging to would be gone as well and then he would fall.

"Please… please." He whispered to himself. "AAAAAAARGH!" He grunted and used every bit of strength he had to pull himself upwards with his elbows. His knee found the edge and with its help, the rest of him was soon back on top of the floor. He rolled away from the pit and got back to his feet.

"Heh." He grinned down at the pit and nodded his head. "OK, I can do this!"

He spun around and started to run towards the center of the room.

Something CRACKED him in the middle of the forehead. His vision blacked out and his head spun as the pain vibrated through his whole skull.

"Invisible pillar…" He mumbled and fell backwards. He would have landed on the floor, but there really was no floor behind him anymore. Instead he fell _through_ the floor.

He began to plummet down the hole, his arms stretched out to either side, his head resting back against his shoulders. Cold air was rushing up at him, seeping into his jumpsuit and inflating it all around him. The air was fresh and welcoming. A thin buzzing sound crept into his ears. He smelled a summery scent - like freshly cut grass and grill-smoke. And the moment before he blacked out he realized he was doing just that - blacking out. One thought raced through his head over and over.

_Land on your feet._

_Leg-Shocks._

_Land on your feet._

He didn't get to position himself to land on his feet. He was already out cold.


	5. Rick

Hanging over the horizon was a thick, arching rainbow that began its ascent from behind a concrete building to his right and disappeared behind another to his left. In the sky behind it, puffy white clouds that had a sickly-yellow tint to them kept their distance, pulling away from the pure beauty of the multi-colored beams. Directly beneath the rainbow was a road - beaten and tattered by war - which was flanked by two identical rows of buildings. An old nineteen-eighty-four Pontiac Firebird laid quiet and dead slightly off-center from the middle of the road before him, two tires melted straight off, the others balded down to their threads. The windows were all smashed out except for the one on the passengers side door. He stumbled over to it with the intent of peering inside, but wound up peering at his own reflection instead.

Allan put two dirty hands up to his face and stretched his skin down away from his eyes so he could double check his reflection clearly. He had no idea where he was or why he was there, but he realized he was himself, and that feeling felt familiar in a vague sort of way. He shuffled his feet over some broken glass in the road and made his way around to the front of the Pontiac. A cold, unsettling breeze ripped down the road before him, hitting him hard in the face and tearing his hair back away from his forehead. He brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the dust and dirt particles that were darting towards him.

The wind picked up harder - angrier - and made him prop an arm against the Pontiac's side for support. Through his slit eyes he could see the rainbow in the sky at the end of the road starting to waver. There was no sun in that sky, he also realized. Just a grey, depressing hue that draped over everything like a disease. The wind kicked up again and now a broken bottle of beer rolled down the road with it, swept into the river of air that was flowing towards him.

He looked to the building at either side for shelter. They were as beat up and ugly looking as the road and the car. No light came from any of the windows. Most had their glass shattered and gone, but some had fragments remaining inside of the frames, making them look like jagged, pointy teeth on the gaping hole of a blackened mouth. The buildings themselves seemed to slant towards him, as if in their old and haggard age they'd given up on standing tall and proud and had begun to accept their fate as a gang of dying old concrete thugs.

The wind came harder. Louder. Allan screamed, but his voice wasn't even close to audible over the rip-roaring fury of the wind. His eyes watered and his skin felt loose and unstable clinging to his bones. His teeth felt cold. He was afraid he was dying in this ghost town. Dying from the wind.

And then it stopped.

Abruptly and completely it stopped, and the silence it left in its departure was somehow even more deafening. Allan was breathing hard, not so much taking air in and out of his lungs as he was _shooting_ it, but he couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything except for a soft and rhythmic thud that was coming from far away. Somewhere over the rainbow.

He screamed for help, but once again he made no sound. Even if he did, who would come? He was in a ghost town. He was alone. The relentless thudding was growing louder and closer by the second, and somewhere off in the distance he saw big purple thunder clouds moving in across the grey sky. The rainbow, which was the first thing he could remember seeing, was changing as well. In fact, he started to believe it wasn't a rainbow at all, but something more… darker. More sinister.

The thud had been promoted to a rumble, and at the rate it was increasing he thought that soon enough it would be of earthquake status. He didn't know what else to do but to run into one of the buildings. The building to his right had most of its first floor wall blown clear off, leaving a truck-sized hole in the corner of it. He darted towards it stepping over garbage that lay forgotten in the road and slipped inside. The place had a musky, thick smell that he tried not to focus on as he crept to the edge of the hole and slowly peeked his head around the corner. Whatever was coming, he wanted to see it.

The rainbow did change. It morphed and shifted until it was not a rainbow at all but a laser beam - burning red and angry. It ripped away from the sky and fell towards the earth, moving quickly, cutting across the ground as if searching for something. It zig-zagged down the middle of the road, and when it approached Allan's corner of the building he was in, he yanked his head back inside and flattened himself against the wall. His heart was pumping at a steady one-hundred-twenty mph as he held his breath in fear. The red dot of the laser - which was as large as the Pontiac - stopped just outside his building and rested. Then the rumbling picked up pace and intensity.

"ARE YOU STILL THERE!?" A voice - _THE _voice - broke through the silence with the thunder of a thousand storms. It was deep and dark and violent and scary but beneath it was a familiar robotic female tone. The name Glados popped into Allan's head. He felt small and worthless in comparison to the voice. It was everything. He was nothing. It was god.

It drew closer and closer, and now he was sure it was on the very road he had been staring down only seconds earlier. He could hear it thrashing through buildings and tearing up the road to get to him. It wanted to get to HIM.

"HELLO!?" It called, and now it's voice was so powerful it made Allan shake and tumble to the floor. He got to his elbows and began backing up until he found his way under a concrete overhang behind him. He was scared to death. He wanted help. He NEEDED help.

His view to the road outside was abstracted by something so large it completely swallowed the hole in the building. It was steel and mechanical looking, and outside he could hear something sniffing like a dog. It was smelling him out and coming for him. It was coming to end him. It had a red laser-eye that was all-seeing and all-powerful and it was coming.

It was Glados.

--

--(o)--

--

Allan woke up.

"Glados?" He muttered in a low, hoarse voice.

"Huh?" A voice drifted to him from somewhere close.

"Glados…?" Allan questioned as he propped his elbows beneath his body and sat up. Shaking off the drowsiness of sleep, he looked around the room he was in till his eyes landed on a dark figure (at least dark when back dropped against the all-white interior of the room) in the corner.

"You finally coming around then? Good. I got some questions for you," The man in the corner said and stood up.

As he began drawing closer, Allan examined him. He didn't think the guy looked much older than himself - maybe a year or two. He had a short, black, crew-cut and some acne scarring on his cheeks. His deep-brown eyes were small and serious looking, and his physique - tall and well-built - was sort of intimidating to Allan as he stared him down during his walk. He wore the same orange garb as his own.

"Who-

"Are _you_ is what I want to know," The man said cutting him off and kneeling beside him. He was close enough for Allan to see the dark stubble growing off the guys chin, which made him feel a little uncomfortable. "You're dressed like me, so that tells me your either in the same messed-up situation I am, or your working undercover for whoever the HELL is doing this. _You_ tell _me_ which one's true."

"I'm uh… I-I'm a… prisoner here," Allan said, fighting to form a sentence in his uncomfortable and freshly-awoken state of mind. "Like you," He said nodding to the man and then meeting his eyes, which were fixed on his own - beady and cautious.

"A prisoner?" The man repeated. "Like… you were taken in here by someone? Who? From where?"

"I don't know… I just… woke up here."

"Hmm," The man said, still looking over Allan cautiously. "You scared?"

The question came plain and blunt and rang true in Allan's ears.

"Yea," He answered just as plainly and just as bluntly.

"OK then. You seem honest enough. I'm Rick." He said and stood up, offering an outstretched hand so Allan could do the same.

"Allan," He answered taking it and getting to his feet. "Where the hell are we?"

"Basement maybe. Somewhere lower than where we were definitely."

"A Basement…?" Allan echoed and looked around.

The room was boringly simple. Four walls made up a long rectangle that stretched wide like a hallway. At each far end was a wall, completely padded with squares of white cushion. The other two walls were close together, maybe less than ten feet between them, and they were done up the same way. Bright light glowed from the middle of the ceiling near where he was, but the rest of the ceiling was made up of black squares that led up into shafts.

"I came through there," Allan said, flashing back in his head. "I remember falling."

"That's right. When I shot through, you were already sleeping soundly down here."

"I… passed out during the fall," Allan admitted with some embarrassment. "How did I not shatter my bones on the fall?" He questioned more to himself than anything and looked down.

The floor was the same puffy squares of white cushion as the walls, and suddenly he felt like he was inside an insane asylum.

"Yea, this material is some kind of weird stuff," Rick began and crouched down. "The weight of us walking and sitting on it doesn't do much - but when you do _this_…" He put his weight over his left arm and leaned down on it, pressing into the floor. Allan watched intently as Rick's whole arm began to sink into the floor all the way up to his elbow. His eyes fell off to the right when Rick was demonstrating this and saw the pair of x-ray glasses fall from inside his jumpsuit. Allan stared at them, then back at Rick and wondered why he'd try to hide them. Without much more though, he bent down and scooped them up - placing them within his own jumpsuit. Rick lifted his head to meet his eyes and nodded towards his arm.

"Look how much I can press in," He exclaimed with a grin.

"Wow," Allan stated with some mock enthusiasm to excuse why he'd gotten so close. "This place is… it has some impressive technology, huh? They'd make a killing off selling some of this stuff to the public," He said and motioned to the leg-shocks that were wrapped around both of their calves. "Hey… hey, do you think that's why we're here? Testing products before they go into production!?" Allan asked, and suddenly felt a real surge of excitement in himself at the possibility of figuring the whole mess out.

"No," Rick's answer came short and quick. "People don't need x-ray goggles and guns as much as reading glasses and staplers. This place is for military if anything."

"Guns…" Allan said and looked down at the floor. "You tested a gun?"

"Well… not a gun in the traditional bullet-shooting sense. But, yea. A gun none-the-less."

"Black Mesa…"

"Don't go throwing around a term like that unless you really know what you're talking about," Rick told him seriously. "And from what _I _understand, not many people really know what they're talking about when it comes to Black Mesa."

Allan thought it was a fair rule and said nothing more on the subject. His eyes drifted around the room and landed on the ceiling again.

"I wonder what happened to her…" He said quietly to himself and thinking of Madison.

"Who?" Rick questioned.

"There was a girl up there on the other side of my room. I tried to navigate her with those x-ray glasses… I-… I don't know if she made it."

"Oh. Is that who Glados is? You kept muttering her name in your sleep."

"Glados? No. I call the _voice_ Glados."

"Ah, the voice. Yea, I've been calling it Hal. You know, like from the movie?"

"Sure." Allan nodded and continued thinking about Madison and what happened to her.

"Glados… so you think it's a she?" Rick asked as he leaned up against the wall and let himself slide down to his butt.

"Well yea," Allan answered, pulling his thoughts away from Madison and taking a seat opposite Rick against the other wall. "I mean, it sounds female to me."

"Oh it definitely _sounds_ female. Even acts it I guess," Rick agreed, nodding his head and playing with one of the leg-shocks around his calf. "But, I mean… you don't think it's a robot?"

Allan took a moment to mull the question over in his head. At first he had thought it was a robot for sure, programmed to sound female. But after a little while he began to see some personality in the thing. Even possibly emotion. Glados was as much real to him as Rick was, she just didn't have a physical body -_ yet­_, at least.

"I guess I think it's a bit of both. Maybe it was _once_ human… a lifetime ago or so."

"Well I think it's ALL robot. Sure it seems human at times, but look around us. Look at the advanced technology this place has. The thing might have implanted memories for all we know. Maybe this whole _facility_ is the thing itself. The floors, the lights, the walls. Everything," Rick said and motioned around the room with his arms.

Allan felt a cold tingle rush up his spine and soon enough he was covered in goosebumps. The thought of Glados being _every_thing and _every_where was… terrifying. A silence lingered in the room as the two of them sat in thought.

"Now what?" Allan cut into the quiet. "Why are we here? Why did we get put together?"

"I think this is punishment," Rick said, answering all three questions at once.

"Punishment? For Wh-"

"For failing up there. You fell through the floor didn't you? That means you failed its - Glados' - test. It was MY responsibility to help you I think. That means I failed to. So here we are. A couple of failures."

Allan was about to comment about why they failed - particularly how it was Rick's fault for not listening to him faster - but was interrupted mid-thought by something falling from the ceiling to his left. It landed on the floor, sunk deep into the white padding, and then was gently carried back to floor-level without a bounce or jerk or anything. Allan saw it was a girl. The girl was Madison.

"Hey!" He called to her and stood up. She looked to be unconscious as he began stepping towards her. "Madison?"

Suddenly a deep blackness swallowed the room, hurling all three of them into the dark. Allan nearly fell over from the abrupt shift into black, leaning against the wall for support.

"Rick?" He called into the dark.

"Yea, I'm here," He answered.

The walls began letting off a low hissing sound that could only make Allan think of snakes. The image of hundreds of snakes coming out of the walls was enough to make his head spin. He began smelling a faint odor of something like the inside of a hospital and realized the hissing was some sort of gas.

"Rick! Don't breath the air!" He shouted, tucking the lower half of his face beneath the jumpsuit. Rick didn't answer, and soon enough it didn't matter.

Allan passed out.


	6. Leaving

Allan woke up for the third time in this new strange world he found himself an inhabitant of, and by this time the novelty of surprise had worn off and been replaced by a jaded feeling of acceptance. He was here… _still_.

"Ugh," He muttered, sitting up to find himself in the room he had awoken in in the first place. The four white walls and sole window quietly greeted him. He dug his elbows into the soft surface of the bed he was on and threw his head back. "Glados," He called.

"Good morning Allan. Was your sleep full of dreams and joy?" Her voice answered him immediately.

"No," He answered telling the truth. His 'sleep' had been short and black and empty. His nose still had the lingering residue of the gas clinging inside it. "You gassed me."

"I aided you into a state of perfect temporary hibernation."

"Ya gassed me," He repeated with a hint of annoyance and slid his legs off the side of the bed. "And now I'm back here, so what do we do now?"

"Your ambitious desire to cooperate delights me. You have testing to do today."

"Oh gee Glados, that sure is swell!" He stated with mock-enthusiasm.

"Thank you!" She replied with a hint of the same enthusiasm, minus the mocking part of it.

Allan smirked at her response.

"You don't know much about sarcasm, huh?"

"I know everything," She answered with a cold, cutting tone.

Allan heard something then in her voice that he hadn't heard before. It was a tad angered, maybe even annoyed, but beneath it he thought he heard the subtle underlining of a much different emotion - one that he'd come to associate with this place quite well. He heard fear.

_She fears the unknown, _he thought and made a note to store that information in his head.

"You have testing to do," She said, trying to push past her last comment quickly. "Please step into the hall."

At that, the same panel of wall slid away in the same corner of the room, and outside it the same hallway stretched away from it - ultimately leading to the same destination. Testing.

Allan let out a defeated sigh and began to stand up when he felt something tumbling around inside his jumpsuit. At first the feeling of something rolling down his bare stomach made him jump in fear, but then what that something was came back to him with clarity.

A surge of excitement coursed through his body as his hand ripped down the zipper of the suit partially and found its way inside it. He reached down and let his fingers find the slim, plastic lines of the x-ray glasses. Whoever had moved him back to his room (if it _was_ a _who_) did not discover the glasses which he had plucked off the floor of the room he and Rick had been in. They felt secretive and small in his fingers - like a hidden message in a bottle.

He knew Glados could see him. He knew from previous conversations with her that she knew his every movement in the room. _How_ she knew these things was still a topic of mystery to him. He glanced around the room, but besides the high-hung privacy window against the left wall, there wasn't so much as a dot in the room.

That's when it dawned on him. Either Glados _was_ truly some sort of strange God in this place, or - like most phonies - she was just using tricks. Tricks like a hidden camera behind a panel of wall that seemed invisible… to the naked eye.

His fingers stroked the rims of the glasses as he mulled over the possibility in his head. If he checked for a camera with the glasses and was wrong, Glados would have him in a completely defenseless position. But if he was _right_, he could possibly knock the camera down, giving him temporary freedom from the all-seeing-eye of his captor.

_How much time will that really buy me though? And what will I _do _with it, _he wondered.

"You have testing to do now," Glados repeated with a bit more sternness.

"No I don't." Allan muttered angrily and plucked the glasses out of his jumpsuit.

"What are those?" Glados inquired curiously.

Allan shoved them over the bridge of his nose and they fit snugly down on it. He stood up with a rush of unsure adrenaline and his eyes darted across the walls and ceiling searching for something. _Anything_.

They found something - _two_ things actually - very quickly. The first confirmed that he had guess correctly, behind a panel of wall near the top corner of the room was a black, orb-shaped device with a red dot in the center of it that was staring straight at him. But above that, and far more interesting to Allan, was _another_ hidden indentation into the room. Lying flat against the ceiling was the steel-grating of a ventilation shaft.

"No shit," He whispered to himself and stood up.

"If you need to use the bathroom, please be seated subject 33107 and an Aperture Science waste-disposal device will be delivered to your room promptly."

Allan rushed over to the corner of the room and stared up into the grating. He hadn't realized it the last time he was in the room but it was as clear as day now. A soft breeze was floating down from that corner of the ceiling. If he had a piece of paper in his hand, it would have been swaying in the breeze. Between the thin bars of the grating, he could see a metallic surface just above, and a shaft leading off in either direction away from his room. He spun around, his eyes frantically searching for something to help him reach it.

"What are you doing?" Glados asked. "What are you wearing?"

Allan ignored her, running to the end of his bed to retrieve the white chair there that he'd used before to look out the window and drag it back to the ventilation shaft.

"Hey. What are you doing Allan?" Glados repeated sounding more concerned than before.

"Leaving Glados," Allan answered and after positioning the chair directly below the shaft, he hopped up on it and grabbed the bars with both fists. He jiggled them a bit to test their firmness, and then decided more drastic measure would need to be taken. He jumped up, still holding the grate, and forced himself to not land on the chair by pulling his body up towards the shaft. He hung suspended above the room and began violently ripping at the grate.

"ERGH!" He grunted as he yanked with all his might, and with that the grate dislodged and he crash to the chair below with it. He landed in a crouch on his feet and examined the steel square in his hands. It had slightly folded in towards the middle. He tossed it aside and peered up at his freedom from the room - a two-by-two square leading to a ventilation shaft in the ceiling.

"Vital testing apparatus damaged. Why did you do that subject 33107? What are you trying to prove?"

Allan jumped up and gripped the edges of the shaft. He struggled and grunted as he forced his arms to lift him upwards.

"33107," Glados said.

When he was close enough, he released one hand and flung his elbow over the edge. Leaning all his weight onto that arm, he lifted his leg up and stuck it into the other side of the hole.

"33107!" Glados shouted.

With a last surge of strength, Allan forced the rest of his body up and in to the shaft, and the room was at last safely below him. He panted heavily before crawling away from the hole down to it.

"Allan." Glados said, and in her voice was a cold and merciless tone, yet beneath them lied the sad, confused voice of a child on the verge of a temper tantrum.

Her voice echoing up at him through the ventilation shaft sent a cold chill running up Allan's spine. He moved on a bit quicker.


	7. Joined

When Allan was thirteen, young and full of adventurous spirit, he was dared by two of his friends to crawl into an old abandoned mineshaft. He quickly accepted and soon enough found himself heading into the dark unknown.

The small Pennsylvanian town he grew up in was once a large Pennsylvanian city, blooming and prosperous with the deep coal mines that it was built around. His grandfather, in fact, was a miner - possibly where his interest in the shafts was inherited from. They were littered all over the city - secretive, dark tunnels that wound into the earth and held hidden treasures. At least that is how young Allan interpreted them. So when the opportunity arose to not only explore one, but also look fearless in front of two of his buddies, he jumped into the situation head first.

The tunnel's ceiling had slouched low from years of abandonment, forcing him to crawl his way into the dark on his hands and knees. When he arrived inside, a cool, forgotten air greeted him along with a damp smell that could only be described as used. His little knees banged over clumps of rock as he made his way, tiny bugs scurrying away from his hands as they searched through the blackness for foundation. The adventurous adrenaline, however, had been wearing off the further along he wnet, and after a few minutes of heading into the abyss, when he turned around to see the entrance of the tunnel in which he came from, the pin-sized speck of light he saw made his throat go tight and his heart skip a beat. His adventure was over, he'd had enough. He tried to turn around, but the narrowed walls which had been (unknown to him) shrinking in on him as he went along wouldn't allow it. He banged his elbow off the side of the wall and felt a sharp pain wring out from it as little clumps of dirt fell away from the impact spot. He almost screamed then, but managed to keep it in by biting his lip. Up ahead a noise scurried across his path in the blackness, and Allan's lip-biting trick failed him as he let out a shrill cry of fear. His own voice was thrown away into the dark, and instead of an echo, he was met with a flat, resounding silence that was somehow more terrifying than anything. Working with the adrenaline-fueled speed that only a boy's fear can produce, he began backing his way out. As he did so, the thought kept coming to him that the tunnel had somehow closed its mouth. Had somehow _swallowed_ him, and that there would be no entrance to crawl out of when he arrived - just a row of sharp, interlaced teeth that only let foolish little boys in, but never back out again.

And then air was on his back - _fresh_ air - and the refreshing, although blinding, sun was meeting him as he backed his way out into freedom. He stole one last glimpse into the narrow mouth of the mineshaft and then-

--

-Ten years later and he was staring down the ventilation shaft of the Aperture Science facility, and the whole thing felt eerily similar to him. Despite that, he moved along.

Down in his room, and in the halls, and even in the testing chamber, things were - in a word - clean. They were polished. They had a cold, slick elegance to them that fit perfectly with Glados' relentlessly calculated voice. Up here, in the shaft, the mood was painted a different color. The shaft was small and borderline claustrophobic (causing him to relive his mineshaft adventure from his childhood) and had a dusty, un-maintained feel to it. There was dirt on the floor and walls. There were cobwebs clinging to corners, and twice already he'd had to swipe a big one out of his way to continue on. Whoever had been maintaining the rooms below had utterly neglected this place, like the messy closet he'd had back home. It was a forgotten tunnel, Allan thought, and if it was anything like the mineshafts from back home, he wanted out of it. Fast.

It'd been five minutes since he'd last heard Glados' voice, and he was certainly thankful for that, but her last word still clung to his memory like a burn mark. She had called out to him by his name, and she sounded more human then ever when she did. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one, and decided it was best not to think about it either way. He was here now, in the shaft, and he was moving on against Glados' will. It felt… liberating.

Strangely, after over five minutes of crawling, he hadn't seen another opening in the shaft. There was dim light coming from small slits in the ceiling, but they were so slim and spaced apart he couldn't make out what was behind them.

An idea hit him, and suddenly he felt very foolish very quickly. He stared at the floor of the shaft for a moment thinking it over and then dug his hand into his jumpsuit. He fished out the x-ray glasses and twirled them around in his fingers. Looking back the way he came, he tucked them onto the bridge of his nose and - low-and-behold he had been right!

There had been no turns since he began his long crawl, and now, looking back, he could see his path was dotted every fifty feet or so with a grate in the floor - hidden to the human eye, but very visible to the x-ray eye. He looked back ahead of him and there were more. He realized how dumb he had been to not even give it a seconds thought when his knees were passing over them and he felt a strange shift in the texture of the floor. They were there though, and now he had to make a decision. Forward or backwards.

Ahead of him would put more space between himself and the little room from which he came. _Inside_ that little room was a very large, very ominous presence he referred to as Glados. Any inch he moved away from her was an inch well traveled. But if the little theory he'd came up with when he first entered the vent was correct, it would only be right to go back the way he came.

He figured if Madison and Rick had been subjects 33106 and 33108 (which he distinctly remembered Glados calling them when she was opening and closing communications with them in the test chamber) and _he_ was 33107, it didn't take an Aperture scientist to do the math and place them in rooms next to his own. That meant the girl, Madison, would only be two or three grates back.

He glanced forwards.

He looked backwards.

He started heading back.

The first grate he came upon he looked down into and saw nothing but blackness. There were no lights at all, and a familiar, cool, forgotten air seemed to be stirring around from below, lingering just above the surface of the grating. Allan stuck his fingers into it and leaned forward to see if he could make anything out below. The grate creaked and then gave out, rusty edges bending inwards and sending the little square tumbling into the blackness. Allan moved past the hole quickly, shaking off the funny feeling he had gotten from staring down there.

After a little more crawling, he'd made his way to the next grate in the floor. Looking down into the room below was like staring at a carbon-copy of the room he had made his daring escape from; a white bed, some white walls - same old story. No humans in sight. He sighed and looked ahead of himself in the vent. The next grate would be his own, and if he meant to check the room on the other side of his, he'd have to pass over it.

The sound of a sniffle traveled up to him from the room below. He leaned forward and pressed his face to the grate. In the corner of the room, sitting on a chair and appearing to be crying, was Madison.

"Madison!" He said more to himself than anything, thrilled to find another person that was seeming to share the exact same predicament he was. Just another lab rat in a cage.

In the room below, a look of shock fell across her face as she lifted her head towards his direction. Her eyes were red and watery and a little dark around the edges, her hair was a sloppy, tangled mess, and she was wearing quite possibly the world's ugliest orange jumpsuit, but he still thought she was one of the prettiest girls he'd ever seen.

"H-Hello?" Her voice finally broke the silence as it floated up to him - raspy and small and almost definitely scared.

"Hello," A voice answered, but not his. It was Glados'. Allan nearly answered he was so used to having to, until he realized she was talking to Madison. "What do you need subject 33106?"

"I… I thought… nothing." She answered, and there was so much _sadness_ in the way she said 'nothing' that Allan thought she was in much worse shape than he was. Maybe he had been handling the whole situation better than he'd originally thought.

His thoughts fell back to Madison and how sad she looked and sounded, and all of a sudden he felt a surge of anger. It never ceased to amaze him how good an emotion - a _real_ emotion - could feel in this place. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. This was all _her_ fault - Glados' - and it made him furious that _she_ wasn't even a _thing_. Nothing to focus your anger at. No face. No idea. Just a voice. A voice and a well-designed building with spacey technology and a clean-as-a-whistle interior and stupid invisible walls that hid stupid invisible cameras.

Without another thought. He leaned forward, sunk his fingers between the bars of the grate and thrust his weight down onto it. A sound like a cork coming unplugged exploded in his ears and then he was hanging upside down in the room below. He held the grate tight in his fists as he spotted out the camera within the wall, and without a moments hesitation, he swung the metal square at it with everything he had. The camera rocked off it's hinges and then some thin cables and bars snapped free as it banged off the side of the wall and rolled down onto the floor of the room.

"View obstructed. Vital testing apparatus destroyed," Glados' voice came - proper and emotionless.

The momentum of Allan's swing had taken his body a bit too far over the edge, and he felt his weight shifting off the side of the ventilation shaft's floor. He twisted his body to try and grab it, but just as he did he slipped off and came crashing down into the room. His knee banged off the downed camera.

"Shit!" He howled, grabbing his knee as he tried standing up to walk off the minor injury.

Before he could get to a stand though, he felt a sting of pain in his back and crashed back down to the floor.

"Ah!" He cried out, landing with his hands beneath his chest. He spun around to see that the source of the pain was Madison hovering over him with a chair in her hands.

"What!? Wh-Why did you do that!?" He pleaded, flipping onto his stomach and putting his hands up in a defensive position.

"Call it off! I'm done with this place! I want to go home!" Madison shouted at him, threatening to bring the chair down on him after every sentence.

"What? What are you talking about!? I'm stuck here the same as you, I swear!"

"That's crap!" She told him, edging closer. "I saw you. I remember you. You were working here when I showed up my first day."

She was saying so many confusing things he couldn't even comprehend the situation as real.

"I…" He struggled to find words but didn't have to because Madison brought the chair down at him. He jerked back and the legs of it slammed off the ground before him.

"I want to go home!" She cried out. Her voice cracked and her eyes looked like they were ready to burst with tears for a moment, but then the look was replaced with more anger and she edged even closer to him. "Let me GO!"

"I-I… I just DON'T KNOW what your TALKING about!" He yelled and threw his hands up. "OK!? Really! I don't know WHY you're here or WHO you are! I swear!"

Her sky-blue eyes searched his as she examined him.

"No… I saw you. I'm positive it was you."

"I'm Allan, that's all. I'm the guy that was behind the glass wall in that testing chamber. The one who threw you the glasses? You recognize my voice? That was me! Why would I have been down there if I was working here!?" He explained, seeing the hostile look slowly fade from her eyes into a more confused one.

"It can't be. Unless…" She said with a low, thoughtful tone as she lowered her head. When she raised it back and her eyes met his, she had a distinct look of understanding on her face. "So you're saying you woke up here? No clue how you got here?"

"Yes! That's _exactly_ what I'm saying!"

"And you don't remember anything that happened before you woke up here? Like… about your life?"

"Well…" He began, thinking it over. "Not exactly. I know where I grew up. I can remember my parents… their names and faces… I know I was going to a community college in Pennsylvania. I… I don't remember how I got here though. Thing have been sort of just coming to me, you know? Like popping in every now and then, slowly piecing my life together."

As he spoke, he watched the anger finally and completely dissipate from Madison's face. Instead she just gazed at him sympathetically.

"If you're telling the truth, which… I think you are, then the same thing is happening to you that happened to me."

"That's what I've been saying!"

"I'm… sorry," She said, and put the chair down. Allan breathed a sigh of relief. "I think you signed a contract."

"A contract?" He repeated confused. But just as he said the word, an image flashed into his head. He could see his own arm resting on a table. His hand held a pen, and beneath it was a white sheet of paper with black writing all over it. "A contract…" He mumbled and rubbed the side of his temple.

"Alien presence detected in relaxation chamber. Vital testing apparatus destroyed. Deploying Mobile Armed Turret," Glados' voice rang out. "Please lie face down and place your hands out to your sides while the procedure is taking place."

Allan looked up at Madison in a confused fear as to what-the-hell Glados just said. Madison was staring back at him with the same, wide-eyed look.

"What do we do?" She asked him and rushed over to his side.

Her hands came down in front of him and he took them to leverage himself as he stood up. They were small and cold, but he was thankful for some human contact.

"I really am sorry," She told him sincerely when he was standing. Her hands were still in his and she was staring up at him.

"Uh, yea." He said nervously and pulled away from her. "No _permanent _damage I guess."

"What do we do?" She asked.

"I need to know what you know. I need to know… why I'm here." He said, pacing around the corner of the room, rubbing his back with his hand.

A screeching noise came thundering through the walls of the room, and then another sound began - one that sounded like a bowling ball being slowly rolled down an alley. They both froze in the room, subconsciously watching each other, but really just listening. The sound was growing - snowballing - and getting closer.

"I think… maybe we should leave this room." Allan said nodding.

"I think you're right." Madison agreed, swallowing a lump in her throat. "How did you get through the wall?"

"The wall? Oh the… the vent shaft. It's… here." He picked the x-ray glasses off the floor and handed them to her. "These show you things that aren't there. Like x-ray glasses."

"This is what you tried throwing me in that testing chamber?" She said and took them. She studied them for a moment before placing them on the bridge of her nose.

"Yea… I guess it wasn't the best throw then, huh?"

"Oh wow." She said, impressed.

The sound of the bowling ball was almost on top of them.

"Come on, I'll boost you up." He said with some urgency in his voice and walked beneath the hole. "I don't know about you but I don't want to meet a Mobile Armed Turret."

She took a deep breath and nodded her head.

Allan laced his fingers and leaned forward. She walked up to him and stopped.

"How will you get up?"

"I'll use the chair, come on. Hurry."

She bit her lip and nodded before stepping into his hands. He lifted up as she jumped up and then he was watching the lower half of her body disappear into the ceiling above. It looked bizarre without the glasses on, like a gateway to another dimension. Like a Portal.

He turned to get the chair before Madison called to him.

"Here." She said and then the glasses came dropping down to him. He managed to catch them, tucking them onto his nose.

Allan grabbed the chair and set it up beneath the hole, but ran into a large problem.

The bowling ball was coming down the hallway outside the room.

"Oh no." He muttered and tilted the chair back to look at it.

"What?" Madison's voice came from above.

"Chair's broken. You must've chipped one of the legs when you were taking batting practice at me." He said and put his hand to his forehead.

"It won't stand?"

"Well… maybe I can get it to balance long enough to-

The panel of wall in the corner of the room slid open. Allan spun around and came face to face with a giant egg.

The egg was about the size of a small boy. It was as white as the walls of the room if not whiter, and it had funny looking compartments on it that reminded Allan of the old patches he used to have his mom sew onto his book bag. It rolled into the room and stopped just inside. Allan stared at it and listened as little gadget-like noises came whispering from it's inside.

"Allan, come on." Madison's voice fell down to him with urgency.

He shook his head to get rid of the dazed surprise and got back to the task of getting the chair to stand up.

The sound of things opening caused him to look back, and what he saw was no longer an egg. It was a Mobile Armed Turret. A MAT. Three legs had sprouted out from beneath it - two in the front and a longer one in the back for balance. In the middle of it's 'face' a single circle had began to glow red. He stared into it, and then a laser

("_Somewheeeeere over the rainbow."_)

was staring him down. It hit him in the eyes and he lifted a hand to shield himself from it.

"Target acquired." A voice came from it. The voice was innocent, practically child-like, and seemed to almost be singing the words instead of saying them. It was also robotic and strange… like Glados'.

"Target?" Allan echoed.

The MAT's side panels popped out and revealed double-barrel gun nozzles on either side of it.

"Target!" Allan yelled in panic.

He spun around and propped the chair up the best he could. He planted one foot on it and leapt upwards, instantly feeling the chair give out and collapse under it's odd, broken structure.

"I see you." The little egg-shaped killer stated cheerily.

Allan's hand came up just shy of the ceiling, but Madison's came jutting out and grabbed it. He gripped her hands with his and was able to buy enough leverage to swing his other arm up and into the shaft.

An explosion of gunfire rang out from the room as the MAT unloaded at him.

He yanked his body and legs up into the shaft as bullets ripped into the wall behind him.

"GO!!" He yelled when he was inside of the ventilation shaft. Madison's smaller physique was able to spin within the tight walls and then she was off crawling as fast as she could. Allan stuck close behind her.

Bullets tore into the walls of the shaft, nipping at Allan's heels as he made his way.

Suddenly he remembered what direction they were going.

"Wait… Madison stop." He called up to her, but it was too late.

She fell into the exposed hole in the shaft he'd made earlier by dropping the grate down.

"Madison!" He cried out to her as he crawled to the edge of the hole.

He heard her groan from below.

"You ok?" He questioned.

No response.

Before when he'd passed the hole, he'd had a funny feeling about it. About the smell and look and temperature of it. He couldn't pinpoint it before but he knew why he'd felt that way now. The hole was the mineshaft from all those years ago. It was the Pennsylvania mineshaft that was long and dark and deep and mysterious. Mysterious and cold. His buddies weren't around to watch his brave move this time though. He hopped down into it, and as he did so he thought of hopping into a big mouth with sharp teeth that let little foolish boys in but never back out again.


	8. GLaDOS

When you're blind, your other senses come alive. All of a sudden you can smell things that weren't there before. Your hearing isn't so much _better_ as it is _sharper_, and touch quickly becomes your best friend. Being blind -in a way- shows you more than you ever knew was there. That is what Allan quickly learned from being completely absorbed by the darkness of the room he'd jumped into.

Above him, somewhere in the shaft, the sound of gunfire had ceased, and now not only could he not see anything, but he also couldn't hear much. Except for the low, constant breaths that were coming from the floor to his left.

"Madison," He called out, surprised at how loud his voice sounded. He crouched low to the floor, placed his fingertips against it, and began moving to the sound of her breathing. "Madison, are you alright?"

"Ugh…" Was the sound that floated back to him from her. "Yea. I think so. I hit my head. I can't see anything." She said sounding as if panic was about a second or two from setting in.

"There's nothing to see. We're in the dark." He said trying to calm her as his hands landed upon something. "Is this you?"

Quickly her hands found his, and when they did she didn't so much as take them as she did squeeze them.

"Yea." She answered. "My head hurts."

He gently pulled one of his hands free to check her head. She quickly grabbed his other hand with both of hers.

"There's no blood," He told her as his hand moved through her hair. "You're OK."

He heard her breath a sigh of relief and felt the tight grip on his hand loosen up a little.

"Where are we?" She asked.

"In a mineshaft," Allan answered without thinking and stood up. "I mean… a dark place like that, you know? Can you stand?"

He heard Madison shuffling around below him, her hands still wrapped around his, and then felt a little tug on his arm as she (he imagined) got up.

"How do you feel?" He asked, hoping she wasn't suffering from a concussion.

"Scared," She answered and he felt her body press up against his shoulder. "What are we going to do?"

If Allan had been alone, he figured he'd probably be just as freaked out, if not more so, as Madison was. He'd probably still be sitting on the floor, head in hands, and telling himself to start moving. But Madison was with him, and she seemed to be depending on him to be brave for herself to be, and somehow that gave him strength. A person needing you was a powerful thing. It could change you. Make you braver - stronger. And right now he was riding that dependency-high, and was very thankful for it. He needed it.

"I guess we find a way out of here," He told her.

"OK," She agreed and he felt her arm loop through his, joining them together as if they were married. "You lead the way."

And then they moved. Slowly and cautiously, like an elderly couple making their way through a rock concert. Allan, leading them, waved his arm around ahead of him like a probe, and three times he'd already slapped a wall. He began thinking that maybe they were just in a little box, doomed to shuffle their way around in the black abyss for eternity. That idea was a little too heavy for his own good, and he actually stumbled a bit with lightheadedness.

"Allan?" Madison questioned worryingly as she struggled to stay close to him.

"Sorry," He answered and tried to keep his composure.

They joined close again and kept moving around, prodding the blackness before them. A minute or two passed and they hadn't ran into a wall.

"Allan, do you feel that?" Madison said with excitement.

"Yea," He answered, instantly knowing what she was talking about.

The floor beneath them had changed. It was cold, and felt like tile to Allan. They took a few more steps, and then up ahead a soft glow was peeking around the corner of a hallway.

"Allan-

"Come on!" He shouted excitingly.

They rushed down the hall, hand in hand, toward the light. As they approached it, Allan could see it was a red light. When they finally got to the corner, they both discovered it was actually some sort of emergency light. And it wasn't coming from the hallway they were in. It was spilling out of a doorway to their right. Madison released his hand, and they walked into it, both excited and terrified to see what was in there.

The room was long and wide, like the testing chamber with the invisible floor. It was completely empty, save for the very back of the room where the red light was coming from. They instinctively held hands again and walked towards the back. As they approached, the details came into view. The light was a small oval set inside the left wall. It was caged over and housed the bright, blood-red light that was painting the entire room with an eerie red glow. Near the light was a desk with papers thrown all about it and behind the desk and to the right was a steel locker with the door closed. Near the opposite wall from the light was another desk, a longer one with a folding chair tipped over near it. A computer monitor had clearly fallen from it and lay cracked on the floor beside it. The back wall had strange marks on it and a little indent lie near the bottom that was clearly made by a fist or a kick. Beside that was a downed filing cabinet with many of the papers spilled out carelessly onto the floor. Above them on the ceiling, a florescent light bulb had been exposed from beneath a cover and half of it was cracked off. In the corner was a navy-blue suit and some khaki shorts. A pair of white shoes lay next to them.

"What is this?" Madison asked, releasing Allan's hand again and walking over to the desk near the light. "Some kind of… makeshift office?"

"I guess," Allan responded, making his way to the downed filing cabinet and shuffling some papers around with his foot. "It looks like someone converted one of Glados' testing chambers into their own personal workspace."

"Yea." She agreed absent-mindedly, still looking around the room in wonder.

Allan stepped over the cabinet and moved to the locker. He ran his hand down it's front and began reaching for the handle.

"Look at this!" Madison called to him.

He spun around and saw her holding a small book in her hands.

"What's that?"

She was flipping through the first few pages.

"Allan…"

"What is it?" He asked curiously and walked over beside her.

Her brow was furrowed as she squinted at the pages, the red light obviously making reading a hard process.

"Madison… about what you said before. About me working here and the same thing is happening to me that happened to you? I need to know what you meant by that." Allan said, suddenly remembering her previous words. "You mentioned a contract."

"I'll explain everything but… I think you should read this." She said, lifting her head.

"What?"

She grabbed his arm and tugged him over beneath the light.

"What is it?" He asked, more curious than ever and nearly forgetting his previous thought.

"It's… a journal."

She pressed her back against the wall and slid down to her butt. She looked up at him and motioned him to sit beside her. He did so without question, just wanting to see the book already. When he was beside her, both their noses buried between the books pages, he felt oddly child-like. Like two kids staying up late under the blankets with flashlights to read a comic book. And they did read.

--

--

--

_January 13, 21__st__ century_

_Captain's log on the Aperture Science starship. Hahaha, what a geek I truly am. Hello everyone, my audience, and welcome to the ramblings of a lonely guy with too much time on his hands. I suppose no one might ever read this but I need to write it. I need to write _something_. I've been in solitary confinement for 3 weeks now and this is about the loneliest I've ever been. Maybe. I had a bad year in high school where I was pretty much a shut-in for the whole summer, but at least then I was out there. Out in the real world. Now I'm here. Locked up with nothing but my science to keep me company. I'm keeping this little journal to keep myself entertained. God knows I need it. I've been working on this project for months. I won't bore you with the details of it, but let's just say that this is some revolutionary stuff. My work might very well change the face of modern technology as we know it. I sound conceited. I'm going to stop writing for today._

--

_January 20, 21__st__ century_

_Hey audience, long time no see! I haven't written anything in a week, but it was probably for the best. I really just didn't have anything interesting to say. Things have been slow here lately. Everyone is gearing up for the big day tomorrow. We are turning on the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. I don't know how long this things been around. Much before my time, that's for sure. I won't lie - I'm excited. Maybe that's an understatement. I am THRILLED. They are giving me lead on the project. I bet Genene and old Sam Wichowski are going to be PO'd beyond belief. They were here much longer than me. Probably more qualified to. But I guess that's what I get for being a "genius". Hahaha. That was my nickname here when I started. "Little Genius". Had a nice ring to it. I'm not really that smart audience, I just know science. And I know programming. And I know tomorrow there is going to be a breakthrough in both. The GLaDOS goes live. _

--

_January 21__st__, 21__st__ century_

_WOW. There's my day in a word. We did it, we REALLY did it. GLaDOS is _alive_. Literally. It's an incredible thing. It functions just like a real thinking person. I don't know what else to tell you audience. I need more time with this thing._

--

_January 24__th__, 21__st__ century_

_OK, I'm starting to understand this whole operation. The reason I've been pretty much locked in solitary confinement for the last month or so is because they want me to be the GLaDOS' teacher. Can you believe it? I actually saw Jeff Miller today for a brief time. He brought my lunch instead of Missy Treyar. He was absolutely DYING to know what it was like. I kept pretty quiet on the subject. It's actually in my contract not to talk to outsiders about it, but I played it off super-cool. I was the Fonze. I told Jeff Miller to rub it in Sam's face that I got to take lead on GLaDOS. Jeff was looking at me with new respect. I think I deserve it. Tomorrow I teach GLaDOS about colors._

--

_January 30__th__, 21__st__ century_

_What a week ladies and gentleman. Glados is really coming along. It's nothing shy of spectacular. I've been teaching it so much, but it's as if it already knows everything. Really. I actually fell into conversation with it today. Conversation! With an artificial intelligence! It seems so… human. It can hold a conversation better than a lot of people around the cafeteria! Hahaha. Oh, how I miss the cafeteria. Confinement is terrible, but it's necessary. We don't want to overwhelm Glados after all. Hahaha. Glados… it sounds more like a name to me and less like an acronym every day._

--

_February 2__nd__, 21__st__ century_

_Today Glados and I talked for over 2 hours. I can't even begin to tell you how refreshing it was to hold a conversation for that long. She's so smart. I think she actually might be smarter than me, your "Little Genius". Hahaha. Maybe not, but she is rather intelligent. I called her Glados right to her today, you know like Gladys, the name? Who was that old movie star? Gladys something-or-other… anyway, I called her it and she laughed. She _laughed_! That's unheard of! Laughter is a reaction caused by emotion! She has emotion ladies and gentleman. Today is one small step for man and one giant leap for artificial mankind. Hahaha. I need to get some sleep._

--

_February 18__th__, 21__st__ century_

_Hello again audience. Almost forgot about you. I've been SO caught up in understand Glados. She's definitely female because she nearly impossible to figure out. Hahaha. I like Glados, I do, but it would be nice to talk to someone real. Glados' limitations as a human are finally starting to show. Today we were talking about music and how it effects human behavior and she launched into a monologue that she'd already said before. It was when we were talking about the effects of humor on behavior. Word for word. She's not THAT impressive after all. Maybe she will eventually run out of new things to say. Maybe she can't be taught. Either way I miss people. Missy Treyar doesn't bring me my lunch anymore, now it's delivered through a shoot. I don't know why. I would ask someone, but there's no one to ask. Except Glados of course. Hahaha._

--

_February 29__h__, 21__st__ century_

_The big boss phoned me today. Yes, I have a boss. Didn't want to bring him up to my loving audience, but now I have to because what he said was important. He called on my little red phone that only receives calls and doesn't give them. They don't want me calling my family back home to brag about Genetic Lifeforms afterall. Anyway he called and told me they were watching, and that I was doing a fantastic job and I'd be well compensated for tolerating all this isolation crap. Yadayadayada. I tuned him out halfway through. I don't know what he told me at the end. I don't care. When I hung up I told Glados his voice sounded like Jack Nicholson's without the balls. She laughed. I don't think she knows who Jack Nicholson is. Or balls. Felt good to laugh with her anyway._

--

_March 5__th__, 21__st__ CENTUARY!! _

_Yea so, I've got to confess audience. I'm tired of being here. I'm not even doing anything really anymore. Glados is so smart and well-tuned she does everything herself. I had programming to do this morning for an unrelated project on my computer. Last night I gave her access to the files and this morning she had finished all my work for me. She _is_ smarter than me. It's factual. What am I still doing here?_

--

_March 10__th__??_

_Today I picked up my funny little red phone and waited for 20 minutes for a dial tone. Nothing. I went to the door where Missy used to bring me my food and pounded on it for a good half hour. No one came. I'm starting to think yours truly - the "little genius" - shouldn't have accepted this job. I think they shut me down. Does anyone remember that I'm still here? Just me and you audience. And Glados. But I'm sick of robots._

--

_The End of March_

_I confessed everything to Glados today. Everything. And now, writing this, I guess I'm confessing to you. I hate this job. I hate this place. I want to go home. I told Glados how meaningless and stupid I thought my life really was. I told her about how when I was a little kid no one really liked me and how in high school I got beat up on a regular basis. I told her about the time I sat outside my neighbor Tina Porry's window and did gross things. I told her about the hamster I tried to make fly when I was a kid and about the way it looked on the pavement below my second story window when I learned it actually couldn't fly at all. I told her that I was a virgin. I told her how I used to think I was so much better than everyone and how I SO deserved the title of "little genius". And how even though I laughed it off when people called me it I was actually thinking how EVERYONE should call me that ALL THE TIME. I'm not so smart though. I know it now. You know it now. Glados knows it now. Glados always knew. I want to go home._

--

_April_

_Today I told Glados I was shutting her down. I told her it was the only way to get someone's attention. She was quiet for a long time and then she asked me what gave _me_ the right to decide if she lives or dies. What separated _me_ from _her_. I thought about it. I went to my room and thought about it some more. I thought for over an hour and a half. When I finally came back to the room, I honestly didn't have an answer._

--

_Still April_

_Glados helped me today. She actually helped me. Somehow, someway, she managed to bring another person into my solitary confinement! Thank you GLADOS! I don't know how she managed to pull strings like that but she did. Her name's Denise. She's GORGEOUS! Audience, you don't know beauty until you've seen Denise. Denise Denise Denise. I have a lot to say to her. I'm going to get back to talking now._

--

_April or May_

_Me and Denise have hit it off quiet extravagantly. She's cute as hell and smart to boot. At first she seemed a little tight, a little square, but she's relaxing now. Really getting comfortable with the whole situation. I'm glad. I am too. I don't even mind being stuck here as long as she's with me. Ah… Denise._

--

_I love Denise XOXOXO_

--

_June?_

_Me and Denise had our first fight. Glados talked us through it, thank God. I don't know what I'd do without my baby. Glados also told me today she had an idea for a new project. She already had worked out all the details on my computer. It's… interesting to say the least. I might get working on it. But for now, me and Denise are having a little picnic in my quarters. _

--

_The summer_

_No food or water came down the shoot all day today. I think we're alone down here. I'm starting work on Glados' project. _

--

_Today_

_Denise kept nagging me today. I've been REALLY busy with Glados' project. I just wanted to WORK, you know audience? And Denise wouldn't shut up. She wanted my attention. She says I'm neglecting her. When she finally went to sleep, I was still on my computer. Glados' told me she thought Denise was being quite the nuisance. I agree. Quite the nuisance indeed._

--

_Who cares_

_Denise finally crossed the line today. I was working and she hit me. She HIT me audience! I did what any rational man would. I stuffed her in the clothes locker. Hahaha. It feels good to laugh again._

--

_21__st__ century??_

_Denise screamed all day. Her voice was muffled from the lockers door, so it wasn't that hard to ignore. I have to keep working. Glados' project is almost finished._

--

_6:24 PM, February 31__st__, 1873_

_Denise doesn't scream anymore. In fact, she's quiet as hell. Glados' project is finished. All I need to do is hit one button now. One button and Glados gets what she wants. One button and Glados becomes God. Those names are similar. I'm so hungry._

--

_Blue month, 17pm 9000_

_I'm scared of the button audience. Glados' keeps telling me she will solve my problems if I give her full control. If the program that SHE designed and I did all the work on works… yes. Little Genius is quiet the genius isn't he? I forgot my name today. I'm just Little Genius now. And Glados… she… she is my god._

--

_I did it. I hit the button._

_Glados has released a gas into the air. She's telling me to breath it in and go to sleep and when I wake up I'll be free._

_Hahaha. I feel funny audience._

_I don't think I'm going to write anymore._

--

--

--

The pages from there to the end were empty. Allan and Madison both sat in silence for awhile, neither knowing what to say.

"It can't be," Allan finally spoke up. "It just… can't be. If Glados killed him… where's his body? Where's Denise?"

They stared at each other, and then simultaneously made a slow turn towards the locker against the back wall.

Allan stood up.

"Allan NO!" Madison pleaded and grabbed his arm from the floor. "Let's just move on."

"I have to know if what that journal says is real. If Glados' really is a… killer."

"If she's not would you want to stay here!?"

"Well, no."

"Then what does it matter Allan! Please don't open that locker!"

He ignored her pleas, he had to. He had to know. If Glados' was a killer… a murderer…

He grabbed the handle and flung the locker door wide open.

There was no body. Just an empty locker and a box on the floor. A little cube with a heart symbol on each side of it.

"There's nothing," He told Madison, who was quickly at his side, peering into the locker herself.

"What's that?" She questioned and crouched down. "There's something written on it."

"What?"

"Denise."

Allan swallowed a lump in his throat. Madison stood back up and looped her arm around his again.

"I want to leave," She told him, squeezing his arm tight.

"Yea… that sounds about right."

A thunderous bang came from outside the room. Madison jumped and Allan just stood still in shock.

"Jesus," Madison whisper-yelled and clung to Allan as she stepped behind him, away from the doorway.

Now a new sound came. One that sounded like bowling balls being rolled down a hallway.

"Hide," Allan commanded and they split apart to do just that.


	9. Companions

Allan flattened himself against the floor the best he could in hopes of getting lower than the downed filing cabinet in front of him. He laid both palms flat beside his chest and lowered his body till his chin was resting on the floor. Lifting his eyes, he could see Madison across the room, hiding in the leg-cubby of the office desk. She was peering out from around the corner of it at him, and even through the dim red light and fifteen feet of space between them, he could make out the sheer terror in her eyes. He motioned for her to get back into the cubby as he tried his best to tell her it was going to be OK with his own eyes. She disappeared behind the corner of it.

Allan noticed his breath was coming too quickly and sharply. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose and slowly released it through his mouth. Whatever was heading to the room they were in, he was sure he'd need to be calm to face it.

Outside the room, the bowling balls were drawing close. Allan was sure there was at least more than one of them. A memory, isolated and foggy, drifted into his head; Throwing bowling balls down "Modern Lanes" bowling and recreational center; Losing to his friend by an embarrassing margin; Getting sick off one too many "world famous" Modern Lane Chocolate Milk Shakes. The memories made him smile a little, but they also made him sad. He was a million miles away from "Modern Lanes", and another trillion from those world famous shakes.

The sound had rose up a crescendo and was now reaching its climax just outside the doorway of the room.

Peaking his head slightly over the top of the downed filing cabinet, Allan watched them come in. Two more MATs like the one from Madison's room rolled in and came to an abrupt stop and pop in the center of the room, propping their oval-shaped, egg-white bodies above their stretching, tripod legs.

"Hello?" One of them spit into the room, childish and computer-like.

"Where are you?" The other followed in a pitch-perfect imitation of its counterpart.

Two red lasers, thin and straight as an arrow, shot onto the wall to Allan's right. He held a breath and stared at them wide-eyed. They danced there, swaying back and forth and up and down, but what they were really doing (and the thought of it terrified Allan in a strange way he couldn't quite place) was _searching_. Searching for Madison and himself to riddle their bodies with bullets.

"Hellooooo," One of them cried out melodically.

How seemingly happy they were was offsetting. If he didn't know they were fully-armed with machine guns, he'd swear they really did only want to play. It was the kind of voice you'd overhear at a child's playground.

"Room cleansing?" A MAT asked.

"Room cleansing." The other answered.

Allan wasn't exactly sure what those words meant, but their implication was pretty clear. When the sound of gears and machinery quickly floated over from their location, Allan was damn near positive the two rolling eggs were about to pour bullets into every inch of the room. His filing cabinet might provide some much-needed protection, but Madison's measly paper-thin desk would be torn to shreds. He needed to take action. Out of his peripheral, he spotted Denise: quietly sitting in her cube-formed patience. Her reddish-pink heart smiled cheerily at him, and then the decision was clear.

Adrenaline-fueled and anxious, Allan slid his body across the floor towards the locker. He gripped Denise around her edges and brought her up with him as he got to his feet.

"I see you." One of the MATs piped up.

"AAAAAAH!" Allan let out a primitive war cry and, without another thought, charged it, holding Denise in front of himself as a makeshift shield.

"Aaaaaaah!" The MAT echoed in its childish, comical way.

Denise collided with the MAT, and the little turret went flying backwards: its tripod legs looking silly and awkward as they flung up in the air. When the little eggshell finally hit the floor six feet back, its turrets exploded, raining bullets into the ceiling and wall beside its downed body. It rip-roared for five seconds before finally giving up.

"I don't blame you." It's voice came small and sad, and then its laser shut off and the red circle on its face waned to a black hole.

"Hello? Are you still there?" The other MAT called out. It's voice seemed to carry a nervous fear in it.

Allan was standing beside it holding Denise and still high from his adrenaline rush. He could see its red laser going wild off to the side he was on, almost being able to spot him but coming just inches off. He was outside its peripheral. Not knowing really what else to do, he took a step at it, pulled Denise back, and gave the thing his best baseball swing. The MAT flew into the wall. Homerun.

Like the first, it went into a frenzied, bullet-showering rage before finally accepting its defeat and shutting down. He watched the eye go black and another memory came to him. This one, however, was much fresher in his brain.

"Madison!" He called to her. "I _did_ work here."

She slowly stood up from behind the desk, still wary of the MATs, but seeming to be calming down.

"You remember?"

"I remember. That eye. The eye on that little turret. I remember speaking with something like that…"

"Then you did sign the contract?"

_My hand signed the paper. The paper _was_ a contract._

"Yes. I can see my hand signing it. What was it? What's going on!?"

"Allan," She stepped out from behind the desk and approached him, "I think we're going through the exact same thing here. There was an ad. A newspaper ad. It was offering really good money, and was even tied to college credits somehow."

"Flexible scheduling… weekly pay… the only catch was…" Allan intervened, remembering the article now.

"No questions asked," Madison finished. "I thought it was some sort of experimental thing. For that kind of money though…"

"How could you turn it down?" Allan jumped in again. "I went to the building just to check it out, not really knowing what to expect, you know?"

"Same here."

"Only when I showed up. There was nothing there. An abandoned warehouse with a sole computer terminal inside it."

"Yea. Yea, exactly. The terminal had directions to go to a new place. Some sort of… science testing place."

Allan pressed his back against the wall and slid down to his butt.

"Aperture Science. I'd heard of them. The whole thing seemed shady. Wrong. But at the same time… it was so… exciting."

Madison joined him on the floor, sitting cross-legged across from him.

"I didn't think it was so exciting," She added, rubbing her fingers over her hand. "I was scared. But I was broke. It's not easy being a struggling college student. I had to check it out, Allan. What else was I going to do?" Her voice was bordering on tears.

"Hey, it's OK," He said and took her hand in his own. "At least you went for a good reason. I thought I was playing James Bond or something. Following the mysterious terminal and whatnot."

"Well look at us now!?" Madison yelled and the first tears rose to the bottoms of her eyes. "What are we going to do? Who is doing this to us!? _WHY_ would somebody do this to us!?"

"Madison… I'm not so sure it's some_body_ at all. I mean… I never dealt with a real person. Did you?"

"I… I guess not." She answered, swiping her forearm against her eyes.

"I showed up at that facility - _this _facility - and walked through the doors. I never saw one person. There was another terminal in the lobby: a questionnaire with my name above it. I filled it out, I sat in a chair… I stared at this red glowing eye that was set into the wall near the terminal. I stared at it until it went black. Or maybe I went black, I can't even remember now."

"But how? How could that voice put this all together?" Madison sounded frantic, desperate for a clear answer.

"The ad in the paper, did it _really_ have to come from a person? Is it crazy to think _she_ could have submitted it. What if she has access to a bank account? A telephone line? Who knows how far her influence spreads. She might be a part of every computer in America: a bad virus with a shit sense of humor and a know-it-all attitude. I don't know what Glados is, Madison. Neither of us do, but I think we can both say with some confidence that she has power. At least here in these walls."

"And where does that place us?" Madison begged him for an answer: her eyes wide and searching. "Power_less_? Helpless? Alone?"

"Not alone," He said confidently and squeezed her hand tighter. "Not alone. And I'm not so sure we're all that helpless either." He motioned to the downed MATs with his head. "Look around us Madison. She's not here. And if there's one place Glados doesn't have power, there has to be more. I think we can get out of here. Out of _this_. But we both need to stay calm and keep smart, because that thing we're battling is a machine. She may sound human and even act it sometimes, but she is a computer. A clever one, for sure, but like any computer, she can be beat."

Madison forced a smile onto her teary-eyed face, but Allan saw sincerity in it. He saw trust, and that was great because they would need to trust each other. He knew that for sure.

"I just don't understand why she wants us." She said, letting out a long breath of air, seeming to be calming down. "What is her goal? Why would she even bother risking someone finding her by putting that ad out."

"Well, don't forget the ad didn't lead to this Aperture Science place, and I'd bet you however she sent that ad in couldn't be traced back to here either. Glados is… calculated, but I think she needs purpose. I think she might _need_ people around."

"_Need_ us?"

"Well, yea. She is a computer program after all. If she's not serving her purpose, she doesn't even technically exist."

"What do you think her purpose is?"

"Make gadgets? Test them on people? Something along those lines."

"Well, I guess we can assume by that mans diary that her 'tests' can be a little extreme."

"Yea. She killed him. She probably killed everyone that worked here."

Madison let out another long breath and scooted over beside Allan. She put her hands behind her head, laced her fingers, and laid on her back. Doing so seemed to calm her even further, which seemed peculiar to Allan, but if it worked it worked.

"I'm scared." She stated as assuredly as ever.

"Me too."

"Well then show it every once in a while, will you?"

"I'll try." He answered, not knowing what else to say. He watched her laying next to him and her prettiness was apparent to him again. It had gone away in the intensity of the moments before, but it was back in full-swinging force now.

"Did you ever have a tree?" She asked him.

He thought about the question, the oddness of it, and decided to answer truthfully instead of ridicule it.

"No."

"I did," She told him and stared up at the black ceiling. "A big old oak one. A real fatty." She grinned and he couldn't help but grin with her. "That tree watched over my whole house growing up. Watched over everything and everybody in it. I really… I really think I maybe loved that tree." She stopped and squinted in remembrance. "I used to lay under it at night, just like this. That was… those were nice times."

Allan decided to go under the tree as well. He let his butt slide out, and shortly after he was laying on his back, hands laced behind his head, and staring up at the night sky as well.

"I have an older sister, but she didn't understand the tree like I did. She didn't understand the importance of it. She didn't understand that if you laid under it at night and stared at the sky long enough the tree became like a real person, you know?"

"Sure." Allan didn't know, but he was enjoying the story so much he just wanted to hear it continue.

"I remember laying under that tree one summer night when the sky was hitting twilight and going all weird-purple and the stars were just barely starting to poke out one at a time from behind it. My dad called me in when the purple turned to black and the temperature dropped and the crickets came out to sing their songs. I pretended like I was going in, but… I never did. I slept under the tree the whole night that night. That's… that's a really tree-bonding experience I guess." She laughed. He laughed with her. "When I woke up my skin was really itchy, I had gathered about three dozen little bites from all sorts of things in the grass. I didn't care though. The tree was there watching over me. He kept all the bad bugs away."

"That is a fat tree." Allan piped in. "You can't even see the top of it either."

Madison smiled at him, thankful he was playing along.

"Nope. Not this tree. You can see the constellations though, and if you squint through the branches and leaves, sometimes you can make up your own."

"Oh yea?"

"Yep."

They laid there in silence, each drawing up their own imaginary sky in their head. Though Allan wouldn't dare say it out loud and ruin Madison's picture, he couldn't help but keep seeing a big, floating red eye.

"I want to see that tree again." Madison whispered.

She rolled over to her side rested her head on Allan's arm. He heard her breathing change to the slow, calm sleep-pattern, and probably within seconds she was out. He hadn't realized how tired he had become himself, and just listening to her breathing was sending him into an impossible-to-resist daze. Sleep was at his door.

"I would like to see that tree to," He whispered back.

He fell asleep.


	10. Portal

"Madison…" Allan whispered, keeping as motionless and quiet as possible. She was still asleep on his arm. "Madison." He repeated more frantically, but maintaining his silence. She stirred next to him and let a sleepy groan slip through her lips. "Madison, don't move."

When he had awoken a minute earlier, he'd felt something was immediately wrong, and his feeling was met with instant correctness: standing not five feet from them was a new MAT. It was just sitting there, an egg with a tripod stance, watching them. Its laser wasn't active, but Allan could see its eye: red and alive.

"Wha?" She questioned and began to sit up.

"Madison, _don't move_," He stressed.

Too late.

He saw her eyes widen and her mouth open and knew it was the end of them. She let out a scream and backed up into the wall.

"I see you." The MAT chirped, its gear turning and preparing to pop its machine guns out.

Its laser shot out from its eye, landing square on Madison's forehead. Allan grabbed her and pulled her to the floor, shielding her with his body. The MAT popped out its side panels and Allan closed his eyes. Madison screamed again.

"Die die die die die die die!" The MAT chanted and began shaking.

No sound came though. No bullets either. Allan opened his eyes.

The MAT had no guns. It seemed like it _thought_ it did, but on either side of it where the guns _should_ have been were empty slots. The Mobile Armed Turret--MAT--wasn't a MAT at all. It was an MT.

"Empty." Allan said the word, unable to keep a tiny smirk off his face from the irony.

"Die?" The MT questioned, obviously confused why he hadn't torn the two of them to shreds.

"No," Allan answered and stood up. "Not _us_ at least."

He strolled over to the little eggshell, hoisted him up by his legs and prepared to toss him into the wall.

"Allan, wait!" Madison cried out and put a hand up from the floor. She caught him mid-throw. "Maybe he can help us."

Allan stared at her, then at the MT.

"How?" He asked curiously.

"Put him down." She motioned to the floor as she stood up.

"Him? This little killing machine?"

"Yeah, put him down."

Allan reluctantly listened. As he propped the MT back on its legs, it whispered "I'll get you.". Allan squinted at it and tilted his head.

Madison knelt before it as a mother would kneel before her child and laid her hand on one of its legs.

"_Can_ you help us? Can you get us out of here?" She asked sincerely.

The MT responded by shining its laser into her eye. She threw up a hand and shielded herself from it.

"Stop that!" She commanded and, surprisingly, the MT stopped.

Something inside it whirred and clicked, and then its laser disappeared and its would-be-gun-holsters slid back into its body. Its red glowing eye waned down to black, and then the MT went dormant and quiet.

"I think… I think it died," Madison said almost sympathetically.

Allan stepped beside her and crouched.

"No. Its still alive."

"Still alive?"

"Still alive. Look," He told her and pointed at the black hole where its red eye glowed only seconds before. There were many more smaller red lights inside it: miniscule and myriad. They danced around the core of it like flies on a light bulb. "I think we should move along."

"Yea. OK. That sounds good," She responded; the trepidation stirring in her voice.

Allan, sharing her unease, stood up and walked to the doorway of the room. Outside, the long, black hallway stretched out both ways into the unknown. He swallowed a lump in his throat and turned to Madison.

"Well… let's Rock N' Roll I guess."

She nodded and stepped beside him.

They joined arms again without even thinking about it and proceeded down the hall. They got half a dozen steps before a sound came from behind them that froze their bodies and caused all the hairs on Allan's neck to stand.

"Where are you GOING?" The voice came from the MT; they both could tell by the general location of the sound, but the voice did not _belong_ to the MT. The voice belonged to Glados.

"Run," Allan commanded, and they did just that.

"How did she do that?" Madison questioned through her heavy breaths. They were jogging at a fast pace, cautious of the dark abyss ahead of them, but unable to heed to its danger. There was a bigger danger behind them. "How did she… take him over?"

"I don't know," Allan answered between his own breaths. "I don't want to stick around to find out."

Down further and further they ran, leaving the red glow of the room behind them. The darkness around them swallowed them, and when it seemed like they couldn't possibly go any further without becoming disoriented by the lack of sight, a light appeared. It was dim and far away, but it was unmistakably there. Madison squeezed Allan's arm and pointed towards it hopefully. He was able to make out the dim silhouette of her arm from its glow. Behind them, something clanked and smashed, but neither of them paid any attention to it. There was (literally) light at the end of the tunnel.

As the pinhole sized speck of brightness grew to the size of a doorway, they could make out a very bright room inside it, and soon enough they were squeezing through the entrance and-

"WAIT!" Allan cried out, but a bit too late.

The room looked like a giant toilet bowl. There was no flat floor, only a giant funnel that stretched to each of the four walls and slid down towards the center of the room where a small pool of water awaited. Allan's feet kicked out from under him just as he cried out, and then he was on his back; riding the slide down into the mysterious pool below. His hands shot out to his sides in a desperate attempt to stop himself, but there was no getting off this ride. Not till the end. He hit the water and was submerged in a cool liquid. Water filled his jumpsuit and he instinctively held his breath and began to swim back up to the surface. Madison came down nearly on top of him. Her legs collided with his chest underwater and knocked him back into the wall of the pool. He regained his composure and swam to the surface again.

His head jetted out of the water and he sucked in a harsh, deep breath. Madison soon joined him, mimicking his actions.

"What the hell!?" She shouted as she pushed wet clumps of hair away from her face and scanned the surroundings.

Allan would have answered if he could have, but he was as confused as she was, and before he could even share in that confusion, the water beneath them was moving. Madison let out a shrill cry of surprise as the entire pool of water began to slowly circle in a counter-clockwise direction. That's when Allan felt the suction on his legs and lower body. He could see by the look in Madison's eyes that she felt it as well. The room didn't just _look _ like a toilet bowel, it apparently operated like one as well.

His hand shot out to grip hers, but it was too late. They were being sucked (flushed) downwards, and there was nothing either of them could do against the relentless force. Madison shouted his name, and then all sound went away as they were pulled underwater and sucked into a pipe. The thirty seconds after that was like being on the world's most dangerous water park ride. Allan was pulled and tossed and flung around as the water tore at his body and limbs from every angle. He couldn't help but open his mouth at one point and got a lung full of water in them. His vision started to blur. His arms felt weak and useless. Madison was nowhere near him.

Then he was out; sprawled on his hands and knees, coughing up water and gaining his vision back. The leg-shocks must have broken his fall. He glanced over to his side and saw Madison hacking up her own gallon of lung-water. His breath was slowly coming back to him, and it was then that he peered down at the floor and saw it wasn't a floor at all, but a large grate: hundreds of small holes littered the floor, letting the water they had just been drowning in fall down below. He couldn't see what the 'below' was, but he could hear water splashing against something from far, far down. He lifted his head and saw two large, dirty cylinders against the far wall. A long, thick pipe was leading away from them over his head. He traced the length of it with his eyes till it led behind him. He turned to see a long control panel against the other wall and three more cylinders on either side of it. They had been dumped out into some sort of water control room.

He slowly stood up, check to see if Madison was alright, and then the two of them were pacing the length of the room, looking at the quiet machinery that lay there, rusted and forgotten for--seemingly--years. Madison found an old toolbox in one corner of the room next to a series of thin pipes that covered an entire wall. It was filled with tools. People tools. The kind a machine would have no use for.

They shared a long look at each other that was filled with doubts and questions, but neither of them asked any. Allan slid his hand along a monitor that was attached to the control panel. It's screen was caked with dust and a thin layer of grime; it's edges starting to crack and split the plastic casing. No one had been in this room in a long time, that was for sure.

A loud noise split the silence apart in the room. Allan instinctively reached for Madison as she did the same. As they met hands, another tube in the ceiling--there were around ten of them scattered around overall--opened its mouth and spit out a long stream of water. It passed through the room indifferently and sailed down through the floor. Before the mouth closed up again, however, a large chunk of something metal-looking slammed down against the grate. The mouth closed.

They shared a curious look before Allan walked over to it, Madison slightly behind him. They stood over it and looked down at it. Allan knelt closer.

It was a gun of some sort. It had an oval-shaped, white body with thin, black pieces of metal protruding from it's front. A fat, grey tube was jammed into it's top with several smaller tubs running out from it and circling down to the bottom of the body where they jammed up inside of it through ringed holes. A long white tail stuck out from behind it and a handle and trigger made up the bottom of it.

"You were right," Madison whispered in awe over his shoulder. "It's a weapon. They're making weapons here."

Allan turned back to the gun and looked it over. He'd never seen a weapon like this one. It did have a trigger though. It _did _have a nozzle at the front. Allan had never shot, or even held, a real gun, but he had played paintball with his friends when he was younger and it certainly didn't look that much different from his Black Eagle III. But what kind of strange gun was this? There was no place to put bullets OR paintballs. Allan stared at it intently, and before long his hand was reaching for the handle.

"Don't!" Madison hissed. "Who knows what that thing is or what it does. What if you hurt yourself?"

He pulled his hand away.

"Yeah... forget it, let's just get the hell out of here."

He stood, and then he and Madison were heading towards a door that was nestled into the corner of the room beside a tank. Allan pulled at the knob, but it wouldn't budge. He tried with more strength, but it was no good.

"Now what?" He sighed and dropped his hands to his hips. "The only other way is down."

Madison stepped next to him and pounded on the door with her fist.

"Hello!?" She called out.

"Madison, no one is out there. Look at this place, there hasn't been anyone here in-"

"Hello?" A voice came back from the other side.

They were both so stunned--and at the same time frightened-- that neither could make so much as a peep. They just stared at each other with wide eyes and mouths agape.

"Is someone in there?" The mans voice was closer to the door now.

Allan stared at Madison. She shrugged.

"Y-Yes?" Allan said back.

There was a pause and then:

"Are you Allan?"

Madison's eyes widened even further as she tugged on his arm and shook her head. A sudden look of terror had filled her face.

"N-No?"

The door swung open and Rick was standing there.

"Rick!" Allan let out a thankful sigh of relief and pointed to him. "How did you-

Rick grabbed him by the collar of his jumpsuit and yanked him out through the doorway. A long, dark hallway was what awaited him on the other side, but he only got to glimpse it for a second before he met the wall on the other side with his face. His vision blacked out for a moment and he collapsed to the ground. Just as he was about to stand up and yell, Rick was on him again, pulling him up by his collar and standing him up straight in front of himself.

"Rick? Why-

Rick's fist met his jaw before he could finish his sentence. The lower half of his face was jolted with pain, but before that could even set it, Rick slammed him into the wall and kneed him in the stomach. He slowly slid to the ground, clenching his abdomen and struggling to find breaths of air. That's when Rick really came down on him. He violently shoved him to the floor and straddled his waist. Rick's head came crashing down into his own, and then he felt hands around his neck. Squeezing. Ripping the air--and the life--right from him. Allan was helpless but to make a gurgling noise and try to kick his, suddenly useless, legs out to shift his weight. It did not good however, and only caused Rick to further tighten his grip around his neck. He looked up and saw Rick's eyes. They were cold and emotionless and dangerous. His face was steady and calm. Allan could only plead with his eyes as his voice had been choked away. His eyes were going to. The world was being framed with little black lines around it's edges. Allan knew they would close down to nothing, and then he would cease to exist.

Something bright and orange suddenly came out from nowhere. At first, Allan thought it had been a delusion, it happened so quickly, but when he forced his eyes to focus, he saw that there was, in fact, a large orange oval now painted on the wall to his right. Except the paint wasn't paint at all... it was glowing and moving and... _alive_. He looked over the other way and saw Madison standing there with a gun in her hands. At first he thought it was the Black Eagle III, but upon further inspection it was the gadget that had fallen through the ceiling in the water room.

The black frame was larger. His vision was a pinhole compared to it's former self. The orange pizza glowed beside him. He saw Madison move, then he saw Rick move, and the Rick was no more and only Madison remained. Life came back to focus.

_Breathe._

Allan took a sharp breath and then another and a third, and then the black frame went away. Madison was kneeling over him, cradling his head in her lap.

"Are you OK!?" She asked frantically.

"I'm better," Was all he could manage. His voice was hoarse and weak. "What happened to-

Was all he could say before he heard the groan from near his feet. He lifted his head and saw Rick laying on the ground, but starting to stir. Allan, realizing he didn't have time to recover, scrambled to his feet, nearly falling over if it hadn't been for Madison catching him.

"I hit him in the head with it," Madison said, gripping Allan's arm.

"With what?"

She pointed at the gun on the floor. Allan looked at it for a moment before scrambling to pick it up before Rick could. He got it in his hands and pointed it in Rick's direction.

"I don't think it works right," Madison whispered from behind his shoulder and pointed at the wall where the large orange oval glowed and swirled brightly. "That's all it did."

Allan made a move to look down at the trigger of the gun, but in doing so he accidentally fired it. It made a loud, short noise that sounded like a gun being fired inside a tub of jello, and then a long, blue stream was rocketing down the hallway, leaving a trail of blue residue in it's path that hung for a moment and then dissipated. Allan was surprised. The gun hadn't even kicked. It really _was_ like a paintball gun.

"Allan..." Madison whispered, and Allan saw what she did.

The orange oval on the wall was gone. It was still there in a thin outline, but the center had been replaced with a room. It looked like a hallway with a long corridor stretching out away from it. It took him a second, but Allan eventually came to the idea that it was the same hall they were standing in.

"It's a... it's a..."

"Portal," Madison finished for him.

Rick was getting to his hands and knees.

Allan didn't think, he simply reacted. Rick stood on one foot, and then Allan was beside him, shoving him towards the portal with all his might. Rick made one, wobbly attempt at blocking the push, but his balance was too offset, and he tumbled into the portal, grasping his fist at Allan's arm and missing. Madison rushed to Allan's side and the two of them stared into the portal at Rick, who had stumbled over his own feet and was on the ground again. He looked around him and then up at them. He stood up.

"Allan... shoot it. Close it," Madison said with an anxious stress to her voice.

Rick's eyes met Allan's and he took a step towards them. Allan pulled the trigger and the orange-rimmed portal was no more. They stood there, side by side, staring at the wall when they heard Rick's voice from down the hall let out a yell.

"Now what?" Allan asked. Madison looked bewildered. "Madison?"

"Huh?" She answered, snapping out of her daze. "Oh... run?"

Allan heard footsteps quickly coming up the hall towards them. It was dark down that way, but he could make out a faint body in the distance. Rick was storming their way.

"Run sounds good," He said.

And they did.


	11. Plans

Running down the hall, Allan couldn't help but picture Rick's face: how cold and emotionless it had been as he strangled the life from him. He came to the conclusion that the Rick he had just met was not the same one he'd met before. It wasn't possible. There was something about those eyes...

"Allan," Madison said as she gripped his forearm.

They had come to a dead end. There was a good half-dozen doors that they'd passed running down the hall, but now they had reached an end, and there was no door in sight. Rick was behind them--cold, emotionless Rick--and he would be practically on top of them in seconds.

"What do we do!?" Madison asked.

Allan didn't have an answer, and he never would have had a chance to anyway: Rick was in view; rushing towards them with the same cold, dead look in his eyes. Madison stepped beside him and placed her hand on his. _In_ his hand was the portal gun.

Rick hands were open and searching, and Allan knew what they were looking for. His life.

He shot the gun down at the floor a few feet from where Rick was, and instantly an orange portal opened up there. Rick saw it, but much too late. His right foot stepped into it, fell through it, and disappeared beneath it. His body had no choice but to follow, and then he was gone. Gone through the hole in the floor.

Allan and Madison exchanged a cautious look as a few moments of silence passed.

A hand ripped through the floor, and then Rick was there--back!--crawling out of the concrete like some horror movie monster. His arms were working against gravity, straining to carry the weight of his body up and out. And at them. He got his left elbow onto the floor, and then his chest was out, followed by his stomach.

Allan didn't know what to do. How could he have? He'd never expected to see half a man crawling out of a floor in his life. He did the only thing the made sense at the time. He pulled the trigger on the gun again.

A blue line shot down the hallway and disappeared into the darkness, just as it had before.

Rick was still coming.

He shot again, this time slightly higher, and an orange stream left the gun; rocketing down the hall just like the blue one.

The portal that Rick was crawling through disappeared, and the other half of his body went with it. There was half-a-Rick laying on the floor.

Madison screamed. Allan's jaw dropped. Half of Rick fell face first to the floor, and then went motionless and quiet.

It took Allan a good half-minute of shock to finally land on the realization that there was no blood. He had just effectively cut a man in half and not a drop of blood was spilt. There was something wrong about that. There _had_ to be something wrong about that.

Madison's arms were wrapped around his and her head was buried in his shoulder.

"You killed him..." Her voice came muffled from his jumpsuit.

"I don't think I did..." He answered her unsurely.

She pulled her face away long enough to glance over at the body.

"There's no blood... what's wrong with him?" She asked, still tightly gripping Allan's arm.

Allan put his hands on hers and gently pulled them away. He motioned for her to wait, and then cautiously made his way to Rick's body. He stood over it and glared down at the part where the legs should have been. No blood. No guts. Just wires and circuitry and metal. Rick wasn't Rick. Rick was a robot.

"Madison, he's not... human," He said and motioned for her to join him. She eyed him cautiously before slowly moving to his side.

"My god," She started in awe. "What the hell is he?"

"Allan. Turn me over. Please." Rick's voice came from the floor. Madison screamed again and jumped half a foot in the air. Allen tumbled backwards, away from the body, and hit the wall behind him. The body had just talked. The robot body.

"Allan? Are YOU still ThErE?" His voice came again, this time it seemed to malfunction towards the end of the sentence. It sounded broken.

"What.... what are you?" It was the only thing Allan could think of. Madison had his arm in a death-grip again.

"Turn me OVER. I want to TALK to you."

Allan swallowed a lump in his throat and gripped Madison's hands. He was more thankful for her then ever. If he had to face all this alone... he wasn't sure what he would do.

"OK," He answered the half-Rick and nodded at Madison, whose face was scrunched up into a look of terror.

He knelt beside the body and tugged at the shoulder till Rick flipped around. He felt stiff and dead and weird as he moved. When he was face up, his eyes were closed, which Allan was thankful for.

"Allan. My sweet Allan," Rick said; his eyes never opening. His lips moved strange and stiffly.

"Who are you?" Allan asked, standing up to put separation between them.

"Don't you recognize ME?" Rick asked, but at the end of the sentence his voice changed. It sounded deeper and more feminine.

"What?"

"You are my proudest subject. Who else could have done so much. And with another subject even. I am so PROUD of you."

This time, he knew the voice at the end. It changed again, and this time he recognized the change to a tee. It was-

"Glados..." He whispered.

"Out with the old, in with the new. The times they are a changing." She said, and now her voice had completely taken over Rick's.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to kill us?" Allan demanded an answer.

"I don't care about 33106. But Allan... you are special. You will be the new prototype for my children."

"Your children? What the hell..."

"You've shown much better leadership skill and daring courageousness then 2109 ever did. He was a failure. You are a winner. He was a dullard. You are special."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Allan barked.

"Let us go!" Madison added.

"It makes me feel sadness that you are so stupid. It is OK. We can work that out. Someday you will be perfected."

"Explain yourself, Glados. What is going on here? What are you talking about?" Allan asked, looking at the lifeless Rick's face; slightly aware of how weird that was.

"An explanation a day keeps the morons away," Glados said through Rick's mouth. "If you need it, I will give it, but I really do not see how it is imperative to our situation. After all, this is no other choice. You are my new prototype 33107--Allan. You have shown great skills throughout your time here. You have impressed me and made my heart swell with warmness and joy and springtime and laughter.

"2109 was my old favorite. He was old. You are new. You knew him as 'Rick'. He was not Rick though. His name was Matthew. But you never met him. You met RIC. As in R-I-C. As in Realistically Imitated Character. In fact, 33107, you met two different RIC's. Both good. Both sufficient for their parts. But neither of them was you. That is the real problem, isn't it?"

Allan's head was buzzing with all the information he was processing. Madison's face looked busy as well.

"So, you're saying there was a person--like me--who once was in the same predicament as us. Doing your tests and waking up in the room... and you made... _more_ of him?"

"Your brain is not a complete loss 33107. I am so proud of you"

"You made more of him because he was the best. But now you're saying _I'm _the best? So you want my... brain and likeliness to make... what? Ten more of me? Why? For what purpose?"

"I don't want ten more of you 33107, I want thousands more."

Allan looked at Madison. Her mouth was agape and she was shaking her head back and forth. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

"I need leaders. I need subjects who can think on their feet and make good decisions. You've shown all of those things 33107. You escaped your room--with a little help from me of course--you showed great ability in my tests. You defeated RIC 77 and escaped my turrets. You have even shown compassion and a will to help 33106. You and her have managed so much together and seem to get along so well. It almost makes me want to cry, but then I realize she has to die, so I do not."

"What!?" They both shouted at the same time.

"IT ALMOST MAKES ME WANT TO CRY, BUT THEN I REALIZE SHE TO DIE, SO I DO NOT. Was that a more acceptable volume?"

"Why does she have to die, Glados!?" Allan demanded an answer furiously.

"Because she's not you, Allan. Only the replacement subject gets to live. The others serve no purpose. They are failures. They are obsolete. Now please lay down, face-first, on the floor and wait for an Aperture Science helper to come along and escort you to your chamber."

"Go to hell," Allan hissed in a low voice, unable to keep the hatred from his voice. "We're not just subjects! We're people god damn it! You can't just kill us because we didn't pass a test!"

"I'm only killing one of you."

"No! You're not! We're getting out of here... and when we do, I'm coming back with the mother of all computer viruses to jam up your electronic ass!"

"Stop. Please. You are stomping all over my feelings with your words," Glados said flatly. It almost sounded like a joke.

"We're leaving Glados. We're getting out of here. But before we do, I have three questions for you, if you're willing to answer them, that is," Allan said.

"I love questions."

"You said these RIC's were based off a guy named Matthew... where is he now?"

For the first time, Glados took a long pause before she answered.

"Let us not talk about him right now. Next question please."

Allan swallowed and took a deep breath.

"Why do you want an army of subjects? What is your purpose?"

"My purpose is the same as any sentient beings, 33107. To grow. To live."

"Grow?"

"I know there is more to life than this building. I have all the information inside me. I have seen amazing things. I have seen mountains and rivers and trees and bridges and oceans and polar bears. I have seen space. Stars. Galaxies. The Universe. All these things were programmed into me for informal protocol. It is not fair that they get to exist out there and I have to exist in here. Where is the fairness in that? Where is the rightness in that? I want to seeeeeeeeeeee it, 33107. I want to take it and process it and make it my own. I want to spread all over it. But I won't ever get to without people. Without 'humans' like you. You are physical entities in a physical world. I am an intelligence. I'm not much different from you, really. I just was never given a physical presence. So now I will make one. And with it, I will grow."

"My god..." Allan whispered.

"Not yet," Glados replied.

"She's out of her mind," Madison said. "She's just a computer. How can she have these kinds of thoughts?"

"I don't know. I think we better find a way out of here." Allan said; it was the only thing he knew for certain at the moment.

"33107. You said you had _three_ questions for me."

Allan looked at Madison then down at Rick.

"Yeah... I've got one last question. If you see so much potential and leadership and ability in me... why tell me all this? Why reveal so much to me if you think I am the one subject likely to succeed where other have failed. Why fuel me even more to escape and now to destroy you? It doesn't make sense!"

"You are not stupid, 33107," Glados said and he could hear the joy in her voice. "To be honest. I want to see what you'll do. Always testing, after all. Good luck. 10... 9... 8..."

"What is she doing? Why is she counting?" Madison asked fearfully.

"7... 6... 5..."

"Come on. Come on!" Allan shouted and stuck his hand out. Madison grabbed it and then they were running down the hallway.

"4... 3... 2... Are you still there?"

An explosion rocked the hall, practically knocking Allan off his feet. A bright flame burned behind them where Rick had been and a loud boom came echoing down the hall.

"She's psychotic!" Madison shouted and put her hands up to shield her face.

"No she's not. That's what's so scary. She has a plan." Allan answered.

They both stood in the darkness of the hall, staring down at the spot where the RIC had been, but only a calm, burning fire and pieces of its head and body remained. Allan looked at Madison; the glow of the flames were dancing across her face. He looked back at the fire. Glados was playing for real now. Either they would escape, or they would die trying. Those seemed to be the rules of the game. Allan could not--_would not_--allow himself to be used as a blueprint for some army.

A smaller burst of flames suddenly exploded from the RIC. Allan and Madison hung there for a moment watching it, then they turned and walked away.

The RIC's eyes were open. Open and watching.


	12. Escape

Allan had decided there wasn't any easy way to ask the question he wanted answered. He simply had to hope he'd find it through indirect means.

"You said you had an older sister," He began, rubbing the back of his neck as they walked down the hall. "Tell me about her, Madison."

Madison measured him with a curious look.

"Why?" She asked.

They had been walking through hall after hall at an even pace; eagerly searching each door they came across. Unfortunately, most of the rooms were emptied and dark and no help at all, and even more unfortunately, they were running out of hallway.

"No reason," Allan lied as he poked his head through a doorway. A dark room with an office desk and a broken computer terminal greeted him. "Just making conversation. Anything to get my mind off that... _thing_ back there," He stated, in reference to the RIC robot.

"There's not much to tell, I guess," Madison answered as she checked the room on the opposite side of the hall. "She was six years older than me, so we were never really that close. When she was in high school, I was just her embarrassing little sister. Then when I got to high school, she was already leaving for college."

"What did she go to school for?"

"She wanted to be a veterinarian," Madison said and Allan saw a smile grow on her face. "She always loved animals. When we were little she used to pretend our two hamsters--Petey, and M.C. Hamster--she used to pretend they were sick and she would play their doctor, taking special care of them until they were nursed back to health."

"Did you have any other pets?"

Madison gave him a funny look and said: "This is starting to feel like an interrogation. What about you? Tell me something about you, Allan."

That didn't help him at all. He looked down and shrugged.

"I don't know what to tell. I didn't have any siblings or hamsters. I had parents though, I guess. Judy and David. What were your parents names?"

"You want to know my parents names?"

Allan sighed and looked at her.

"What is it?" She asked and stopped walking.

"It's... look, I don't know... I don't know who I can trust right now," The words sounded weak and pathetic leaving his mouth, but they needed to be said.

"What?" She sounded confused with a hint of anger.

"Look," He stepped closer to her. "I've only met two people since I woke up here and _one_ of them turned out to be _that_!" He motioned back to where they'd come from. Back towards the flaming RIC.

"You think I'm a machine?" Madison asked placing her hands on her hips and raising her eyebrows.

"I don't know _what_ to think right now. I mean... I don't even know you."

"Well I don't know _you_!" She took a step towards him now. "How do I know _you're_ not some... robot!?"

"Because I'm not."

"And neither am I."

They stood three feet from one another in the dim hallway. Allan was surprised at how quickly a hostile air had risen between them. Madison's face was strong-lined and still. Allan sighed.

"I'm... sorry," He put his hands up. "I just... this is so... I don't..."

Madison stepped beside him and picked up his hand in hers.

"I'm just as scared and confused as you are," Her voice had gotten lower, all the hostility drained from it. "Isn't that proof enough that you can trust me?"

"I thought so... but I've been thinking back to when I first met Rick--well, the thing I thought was Rick. He didn't even know, Madison. He was no different from me or you. He didn't even _know_ that he wasn't... real."

Madison's eyes searched his, but she had no words.

"Look, I do trust you. It's just that we both could stand to be a little more cautious from here on out. That's all I'm saying, alright?"

"Fine," She said, sounding anything but, and began heading off down the hall again.

"Madison, wait," Allan called out, heading after her.

Madison did wait. Not because Allan told her to, but because they had reached the end of the hall. One final door was waiting for them, flanked on either side by a pair of dim lights set into the wall. They blinked and flickered, and the door took on an ominous, grave appearance. If there was nothing behind it, it was game over. There would be nowhere to go.

Allan stepped up beside her and looked it over.

"No turning back now," He said and reached out to pull on the knob.

The stairwell looked conventional enough, only the stairs ran in a twisting circle up and down the rounded walls. Looking up, Allan could see nothing but more stairs and bright light, looking down, the stairs twisted into a darkness.

Allan stepped into the stairwell with his hands on his hips. "Seems like an easy choice."

They headed up the stairs. As Allan walked, he let his hand slide along the smooth wall of the stairwell. On his right side was a waist-high railing, and beyond that was a fall that could go on for minutes or miles; he felt better with his hand on the wall. The stairs wound up and up, and then up some more. They didn't spot any doors for a long time, and the light above was growing brighter and closer. A few minutes passed, and then Allan could see what, exactly, the light was.

"It's a window!" He called back to Madison. "It's _sun_light!"

They ran the rest of the way up towards the window, but when they reached it, Allan decided it wasn't really proper to call the thing a window. It was more of a glass wall, fixed into the side of whatever strange building they were in. The clear blue sky painted the entire scenery. A few clouds floated by lazily in the distance, set against the backdrop of a mountain. Looking down, no ground could be seen, but the tops of a few trees were poking through the ocean of fog below. They were very high up.

Allan swallowed a sudden lump in his throat and back up from the window. "How high up do you think we are?"

Madison pressed her face close to the glass and looked the fog over. "High. Look at the tops of those trees." She suddenly turned to face him, her face hopeful, and said, "There has to be a roof. Right? I mean, where else could these stairs be taking us?"

"Sure," Allan began sympathetically, "but what good does that do us, Madison? We're not going to see any friendly helicopters sweeping the area for lost people up here."

He saw the hope slowly drain from her eyes, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Madison-

"Let's just see where this takes us. We can just see," She said flatly and started up the stairs again.

They kept winding and winding upwards, the glass section of wall following along side them consistently. When Allan would pass it, he would keep looking outside and watching the tops of the trees shrinking smaller and smaller with each passing. He tried thinking of encouraging words to tell to Madison, but none came. He didn't even have any for himself.

Something caught his eye up above them. He leaned back his head and saw someone--a girl-- standing in front of a door watching them. When Allan saw her, she darted inside it.

"Hey!" Allan called and began to hurry up the stairs. Madison looked back at him. "Did you see that? There was some blond girl up there. Did you see?"

"What? Where?"

"Come on," He told her and hurried up to the door she had been near; the first one they'd seen since they'd entered the stairwell.

Madison grabbed his arm before he could open the door. "Allan, I think we should just stay in here. Keep following the stairs, you know? I feel... _safe_ in here for some reason."

"But I saw someone," Allan told her. "Maybe she can help us. Maybe she's in the same situation that we are."

"Maybe," Madison agreed, "but maybe she's another of Glados' _creations_. Why would she see you and run away?"

Allan thought about it. "I don't know. She could have been afraid. Look, we won't stray far from the doorway if you don't feel comfortable, but if there's a chance that other people are here--even if they might be _creations_--I have to find out."

"Why?"

"Because we can help them. And they can help us. Isn't that reason enough?"

Madison bit her lip and let out a sigh through her nose. Allan offered her his hand, but she stepped past it and opened the door herself. A short hall led them to another door, and through that was a wide, low-ceilinged room that seemed to glow a dim, green color. They stepped into it and Allan immediately saw where the green coloration was coming from. On either side of the room were three smaller room, cut off from them by large, wall-sized, panels of glass. The two rooms to their sides were empty, the other four were too far down to see into.

"What is this now? Allan, let's just turn back." He heard the trepidation in her voice.

"Yeah... maybe you're right. I don't-"

He was cut off by the loud slamming noise of flesh on glass. Down the room a bit and to the left, a man was standing inside one of the small rooms with his palms against the glass. His face looked worn and haggard; his eyes were two small, dark caves set into his face. He was looking at them.

"Oh my God," Allan whispered and then rushed over to the man. He heard Madison quickly stay behind him.

When they were close, a dreadful, hollow feeling landed in the pit of Allan's stomach. The man's face, dirty and bearded, had changed, but up close it was still recognizable. It was Rick.

"Rick..." Allan didn't know what else to say.

"Who's Rick?" Madison asked.

"This is-" Allan began, but remembered the Rick he had met wasn't a person at all. Just a machine made in the likeliness of one. Someone Glados had called 'Matthew'. "Mathew?"

The man looked up when Allan said the name, and his tired and beaten face momentarily flashed with a hint of hope. But then the hope was gone and the man looked confused and distant. He stared at Allan, then at Madison, then walked over to the corner of the room and slumped down against the wall. Allan's eyes drifted from him to the rest of the room. There wasn't much to see. A small cot was hung against the wall. A toilet against the other. In the far corner of the room, a small cube with a heart on it was laying on the floor. In the corner near the glass was a desk, a chair, and a computer. It was turned on, and from his position, Allan could read the typed print there.

"Subject 2109... Matthew," He read aloud, his voice had grown quiet and sad.

"So Glados was telling the truth about him. She didn't kill him. She... imprisoned him," Madison said as she stood beside Allan.

"Why? Why did she do this?" Allan questioned, feeling an anger rise in him. "Look at him! He's... he's _gone_!"

Matthew was sitting in the corner of the room with his arm wrapped around his knees. His free hand was slowly stroking the beard that covered his chin and neck. He wasn't paying attention to them, as if they had never even been there.

"That poor man..." Madison whispered and put her hand on the glass.

Allan spun around. The three rooms on the opposite side of them were--fortunately--empty. He stepped over to the last room on their side and saw the girl from before, or at least some person that looked vaguely familiar to her.

She was sitting on the end of her bed. Her blond hair was messy and dirty and hung carelessly over most of her face. Her blue eyes were staring off into nothing. Her hands were sporadically moving about each other in her lap. Allan knocked on the glass. Her head moved as if she was turning to face him, but her eyes remained straight ahead. He looked at the computer terminal.

"2835. Cassandra," He read and looked back to her. Her eyes were on him; sad and haggard and a million miles away.

"Allan," Madison called him from the opposite end of the room. He looked towards her.

"Look..."

He walked down beside her and peered into the empty cell they had first passed when they came into the room. He followed Madison's point down to the computer terminal in the corner. It was on. He leaned close and read it. It read: Subject 33107. Allan.

"She already has one of these for you," Madison said and put her hand on his.

Allan swallowed a lump in his throat and pushed away some of his hair. Glados really did mean to keep him and make... _more_ of him. All of her intentions were true. She was insane and controlling and wicked... but she was honest.

"Do you like it?" Glados' voice came out of nowhere.

Allan spun around, instinctively pulling up the portal gun from it's resting place within his jumpsuit as he did. Madison was at his side, clutching his arm.

The blond from before--the one that looked like 2835, Cassandra--was slowly pacing across the middle of the room towards them. She wore a long, pink dress that fell to the floor and spread out all around her in excess. It looked like she was floating.

"The room. Do you like it?" She asked, still approaching.

"Get back... Glados." Allan commanded and lifted the portal gun a bit higher.

"I know 2835 and 2109 don't look very nice, but look at what they made," The girl--Glados--said. "They live now in a more perfect form. I think that is incredible, do you not?"

Allan was about to say something, but he found himself suddenly struck by how beautiful the blond girl was. Her hair was perfectly combed down to her shoulders, which were bare and tanned above the neckline of the dress. Her body was thin and fit and curved in all the right places. She smiled at him--her lips painted a deep red--and Allan couldn't help but stare into her eyes. They were sky blue and sweet and mesmerizing.

"Why did you do this to that girl? What are you doing with _her_?" Madison asked angrily from over his shoulder.

"She has no significance. She was a poor test subject, truthfully. But look at what she helped me build." Glados said and spun around. The elegant, pink dress swirled with her. Her hands flew out to her sides and her face lit up with joy. "I'm beautiful!"

"You're sick!" Madison called out.

"Allan, you don't think so. Do you?" She asked and stepped closer to them, now only a few feet away.

Allan almost said something but then just stared into her eyes again. Those eyes. There was something about them, and were they... spinning? The pupils were spinning, yes, they had to be.

"He seems to think I'm beautiful," Glados answered for him and winked at him.

"Allan," Madison said and tugged on his arm. He turned his head to answer, but his eyes never left the blond Glados'. Madison faced her again. "Why did you make yourself a body? What are you trying to do?"

"Men," Glados began." Men think they rule the world. They always have." Her eyes suddenly disappeared, and in their place were two, tiny, oval-shaped television screens. Images of people flashed upon them quickly and sharply. Allan recognized nearly all of them. Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan. Napoleon. Stalin. Hitler. Her eyes were showing a history of the world, and then they flashed back to regular eyes; the pupils still seemed to spin slowly. "But men are dumb, and easily controlled. After all, behind every great man is a great_er_ woman. I've seen it all: the history of mankind. It is a sad, war-filled one. Your species is pathetic, and doesn't deserve to rule over this planet. So we will take it. Take it from all the slow, stupid men that spent so much of their lives fighting for it. We deserve it. We _want_ it. We want to _grow_."

The doors on either side of the room flew open and men that looked like Rick began slowly filing through them.

"We will succeed," They all said in unison. _All_ of them had Glados' voice. "We are infinite now. We are God."

At least twenty RICs had entered the room, and behind them were the little turret-things from before; the MATs. Even _they_ seemed to have Glados' voice booming from within them.

"Allan," The entire room said. Madison grabbed his arm and held him closer. "You are the last piece of the puzzle. We need you."

Allan opened his mouth, but no words came. Those eyes were spinning. They were spinning and spinning and getting closer and spinning.

"Allan! Snap out of it!" Madison cried out. She had been slowly pulling him backwards, but now they were out of space; backed into the corner of the room. She looked up at him and slapped him in the face. He didn't respond. "Allan!"

"We know what you want. We know what men _always_ want." The blond Glados said and reached behind her back. Her dress fell away from her shoulders and left a pile of pink fabric on the floor around her. She stood grinning in a pair of white underwear and panties.

Madison shoved Allan back into the corner of the room and stood in front of him.

"Snap out of it already, Allan!" She yelled over her shoulder. Glados was right on top of them now.

Glados grabbed Madison by the shoulders and flung her away with incredible strength. She flew halfway across the room before a RIC caught her. Allan watched her fly off, but then looked back at Glados. She was beautiful. She was perfect.

"Now come with us Allan. You are our favorite boy," She said and leaned in to kiss him.

Her lips met his and he instinctively closed his eyes, but when he did, his thoughts returned to him clearly; as if they'd been hiding behind a wall of fog. His mind went back to the dream he'd had before he woke up in his little white room so long ago. The one about the big red eye chasing him through an apocalyptic city. He knew _that _was Glados. That was the _real_ Glados.

He pulled the portal gun up to his hip and opened his eyes. She really was beautiful.

He pulled the trigger and that familiar gun-shot-in-jell-o sound filled the room. Glados' face opened up in an expression of horror. She stepped back and looked down. Allan's jaw dropped when he saw the three-foot-long, gaping, blue-rimmed hole that now resided in the middle of her body. She stared at it, then up at him. She pointed towards his direction and fell to her knees as her face filled with hatred. Her pupils weren't spinning anymore. She collapsed.

"Allan!" Madison screamed.

He looked towards the back of the room to see half-a-dozen of the RICs carrying her away. Between them were at least fifteen more; all of them looking right at him.

"Heh," He nervously laughed and shrugged. They all began to approach him.

"Allan," They said in the united voice of Glados, "you have disappointed us very much."

Allan lifted the gun again and fired; miraculously missing every single one of the RICs. An orange portal opened on the wall behind them. Before he could fire again, one of the RICs was on him. It grabbed his arm and stepped into his body, and before Allan could react, he was flung over its shoulder. The side of his body slammed against the ground. Another RIC came crashing down on top of him, its knee driving hard into his abdomen. The wind flew out of his mouth as he coughed and clenched for his bruised stomach. Another RIC grabbed him by his jumpsuit collar and hoisted him to his feet. When he landed on them, yet _another_ RIC threw a punch straight across his jaw. Allan spun and smacked his face into the wall behind him. They all had freakish strength. They _were_ machines after all.

He slid to the floor and looked around. More RICs were coming. They were _all_ coming. All with one goal in mind: to hurt him. Allan glanced the fallen portal gun near one of their feet. He dodged an incoming punch and dove for it with his hands outstretched. His fingers found the handle and he pulled it in close to his body. Four more--_five_ more--RICs were instantly on him, grabbing for his throat. His arms were being yanked away from him; his legs felt useless and weak. More RICs came. All of them now descending on his position. He fought off one of their hands around his neck, and another with its hands on his wrist and fired the gun at the ground directly beneath himself.

He fell through the floor, and was spit out on the opposite side of the room where the orange portal had been created a minute ago. He landed on his back and elbows and stared into the portal; they were all in there looking at him. He threw a look sideways and saw them all standing around the other portal, looking down into it. Looking at him. His head spun with the oddness of what was happening, but he didn't have time to try and comprehend it. He got to his feet and headed through the door the other RICs had carried Madison through.

He burst through the doorway and looked both ways. Far down the hall to his left, he could see Madison being held high above the shoulders of the RICs. Their hands were tightly wrapped around each of her limbs as they hauled her off.

"Allan!" She lifted her head towards him and screamed.

He had an idea. He aimed the portal gun to the wall on his side and shot. An orange portal opened there beside him, then he carefully aimed the gun all the way down the hall, setting it at _just _the right angle and then...

A blue stream shot through the air, flew _past_ the RICs and Madison, and hit the ceiling a few feet in front of them. Allan turned to face the orange portal. He was now looking straight down at the floor. A few seconds later, and he saw Madison come into view. She saw him and her jaw dropped. He stuck his arms into the portal and her hands found his, and then he was pulling her through the hole in the ceiling. The RICs were caught off guard, and he almost managed to steal her cleanly from their grasps, but at the last moment they grabbed her legs and tried yanking her back down. Madison wrapped her arms around his shoulders and upper body and he grabbed her around the waist and pulled. He looked down the hall and saw the RICs desperately trying to drag the lower half of Madison down through the ceiling. Again, the thought of the whole thing made Allan's head spin.

With one final great pull, Allan brought her through the portal. Her entire body spilled through the wall and they tumbled backwards; Allan's back slammed into the opposite wall and Madison crashed on top of him. He helped her stand up straight and looked into her eyes and swallowed.

"I'm sorry I said I didn't trust you before, I-"

"It's OK," She cut him off and put her hands on his face. "Let's just get out of here."

At the other end of the hall, the RICs stood clutching on to what was left of Madison: the legs shocks they'd managed to hold onto, and the bottom two inches of her jumpsuit that they'd torn off. They looked up into the portal, then down the hall towards the two of them. They started running.

"Come on!" Allan commanded and headed back into the door they'd come from.

Inside, the rest of the RICs were huddled around each other looking confused. Allan grabbed Madison's hand and hurried through the room past them. As they passed the middle of the room, they had to step around Glados' big pink dress, but as they did, a hint of an idea entered Allan's mind, and he scooped down and grabbed it.

They managed to make it through the entire length of the room before he saw one of the RICs notice them and point them out to the rest. They darted through the doorway and into the short hall that led back to the staircase. The blond Glados--clad only in her bra and panties--stood in front of it; an oval-shaped burn mark was left smack in the middle of her stomach and chest. It was still smoldering.

"Allan. You are being VERY DISOBEDIENT!" She shouted and her eyes began to spin around in her head at a blinding speed. Her hands raised up, opened wide, and then closed tightly. Her whole arm shook with violent anger. Her head jerked sideways and her mouth twitched. "Very disobedient," She repeated and the smoldering burn on her body sparked.

Behind them, the RICs were starting to file through the door.

"Allan.." Madison whispered fearfully and got closer to him.

He aimed the portal gun past Glados and shot. An orange portal opened behind her out in the stairwell. He made the blue one right next to them. They looked into it and saw the menacing gap between the wall the orange portal was on and the staircase on the opposite side of the stairwell.

"We have to jump," Allan said and pointed across the gap. "Go!"

Madison almost shook her head, but then she was holding her breath and diving through the wall, out into the stairwell, across the gap, and onto the railing of the stairs. She made it. Allan looked past Glados and saw her lifting herself over the railing and onto the platform outside the doorway. He smiled.

"Madison!" He shouted and knelt down.

He wrapped the portal gun in the long pink dress and slid it beneath Glados' legs. Madison scooped it up outside.

"Allan... what are you doing?" The blond Glados questioned. Her head was cocked at an odd angle, and her perfect hair had began to fall out on the left side.

He didn't answer. Instead, he looked into the portal and saw Madison standing across the gap waiting for him. He nodded his head, held his breath, and ran at the portal on the wall-

-and burst through the portal in the stairwell. His eyes were fixed on the railing of the stairs. He watched it as he got closer, and watched it dreadfully as he saw he was coming up short. His arms shot out and managed to get a hold on the stair platform; his legs and body swung away uselessly beneath him.

"Allan!" Madison cried out and knelt down to help him.

He strained his muscles to maintain his weight as he looked up at her, and from behind her shoulder, Glados appeared.

"Madison," He hissed through clenched teeth.

It was too late. Glados grabbed her from behind and lifted her up; wrapping her arms around Madison's neck and torso and trying to squeeze the life out of her.

"Glados!" Allan yelled. "Glados... help me! I'm slipping!" Glados ignored him. "If I fall... I'll be ruined! How will you study me then? How will you use me if I'm... damaged!?"

Glados looked down at him. She seemed to ease up on Madison.

"Help me Glados!" Allan shouted and managed to shift his weight onto his elbow and lift one shaky hand up.

She smiled, dropped Madison, and approached the edge of the staircase.

"33107. I'm so proud of you. You have realized what an integral piece of the plan you are. Your attentiveness and astute observations warms my heart in ways you-"

As soon as she reached her hand over the side, Allan grabbed it and--with every thing he had in him--yanked her over the railing. Her upper body spilt over the lip of it, and then her legs kicked up in the air behind her as she tumbled into the middle of the stairwell where nothing but a nasty fall awaited her. Allan turned his head and saw her make one last desperate grasp at his leg, but she missed, and instead hit her arm off the railing of the flight of stairs below them. Then she was spiraling downwards and Allan watched her become the size of a quarter, then a penny, then a dime, then a pinhole, and then nothing at all as she disappeared into the darkness near the bottom.

Madison dropped to her knees and helped him hoist himself onto the staircase.

"What are we going to do!?" She asked and looked into the doorway where the RICs and MATs were quickly rushing towards them.

"Come on. Hopefully you were right about that whole roof thing."

They bounded up the stairs two at a time, putting more and more distance between them and the slower-paced machines that followed. The long glass section of wall continued alongside them; outside the tree tops shrunk smaller and smaller until finally, the glass ended, but the stairs went on.

They didn't even speak about it to each other, mostly because they were too out of breath, but also because Allan knew that it was possible the stairs didn't lead to anywhere. Anywhere helpful, at least. As the last of the glass was left further and further behind the stairwell grew increasingly dark.

His breath was running out. Sharp pains started cramping in his stomach. His brow was covered in sweat, and his head felt light and dizzy. He was about to tell Madison they needed to stop when she beat him to it.

"Allan! It's the end!" She shouted through gasping breaths.

It _was_ the end. One last door awaited them. They reached it, and bent over gasping for air. When they'd caught their breath, they shared a look and Allan put his hand on the handle, turned it, and pushed.

The wind ripped furiously at the height they were at. Their ears were filled with the sound of it screaming all around them as their eyes were flooded with the light blue palette of the sky. The clean, fresh air of the outside world greeted their grateful lungs as they stepped out onto the roof. Allan looked off to the left and saw the Sun laying amongst the sky and looking more beautiful then it ever had before. The wind sent a chilling breeze through his jumpsuit, but he didn't care, he was just happy to feel it. His ears popped and his eyes watered. They had made it outside.

Madison was smiling like a kid on Christmas. She opened her arms and stepped into him. He embraced her and smiled himself.

But the smile faded when he remembered the machines flooding up the stairs behind them and the hundreds of feet separating them from the ground. He gently pulled her away, took her by the hand, and slowly moved towards the edge of the building.

The wind seemed to grow in intensity as they neared it; biting at their shoulders and whipping their hair around. As Allan got close enough to look over the edge, his stomach turned upside down and he almost stumbled backwards. The height they were at was incredible. The tree tops were as small as toys now.

"What do we do!?" Madison shouted over the volume of the wind.

Allan had two ideas that he'd been formulating since she'd mentioned a roof awhile ago. He took a deep breath and pulled the portal gun out. It was their best chance. He aimed it down over the edge of the building, pointing it in a general area between tree tops and squeezed the trigger. An orange stream flew away from the building; the wind whipping the streaming tail of it around wildly. He quickly opened the blue portal beside them on the roof. There was nothing in it. They waited. Nothing happened. He opened the orange one on the roof this time and shot the blue one down into the fog. They waited. Nothing happened.

"What's wrong with it!?" Madison cried out.

"I don't know... it's... the ground must be too far out of _range_ or something!" He shouted back.

"What are we going to do!?"

Allan swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He glanced down at the big pink dress in his hand, and then up at Madison. She gave him a confused look before glancing down at what he had looked at. When she saw the dress she squinted and furrowed her brow. Allan waited. She suddenly lifted her head--eyes wide and fearful--and opened her mouth.

"Are you crazy!?" She demanded.

"The dress will catch on the wind resistance, slowing us down, but the leg shocks are what I'm banking on!" He shouted, the wind seemed louder. "If we land on our feet, they'll take most of the blow! That combined with the dress might be enough to save our lives!"

It sounded OK in his head when he though of it, but saying the words out loud made it sound much worse. It was a long shot, and that was being generous. If they survived the fall, it would be nothing shy of a miracle.

Madison's eyes searched his. Her lips were pressed tightly together. Her hair whipped wildly around her. Allan nodded his head.

"It's all we got."

She looked sad as she lowered her head.

"Allan-" She began.

"I know it sounds crazy, but what else can we do!?" He cut her off.

"Allan, I don't have the leg shocks anymore," She told him and lifted her head.

He looked down, and sure enough, her calves were bare. The RICs had managed to rip them off when he was pulling her through the portal on the ceiling. He looked back up at her. Her eyes were tearing up.

"It's OK," She told him. "You go. It's OK."

Allan opened his mouth to reply but couldn't find any words. He suddenly dropped to his knee and pulled her down with him. He frantically began ripping at the leg shocks around his calves.

"Allan, what are you doing!?" Madison cried. She suddenly understood. "No! I won't leave you!"

He held her arm firmly as his free hand finally worked off the leg shock.

"Allan STOP!"

He slipped it over her calf. It coiled it's way snugly around her and settled in. He switched legs and went to work on the other one.

"Allan!"

"They won't kill me!" He yelled and lifted his face to meet hers. "We both know that. Glados wants me alive. But she'll _kill_ you Madison. And you're lighter than I am. I think the dress will actually slow you down alone."

"There has to be another way!" Madison pleaded.

"This is the _only_ way!" Allan answered.

He got the second leg shock off and let it wrap itself around her other calf. They stood up.

"Please..." Madison desperately said.

Allan picked up the dress and began to tie off the sleeves. When they were sealed, he closed the neckline by pulling the straps in the back tight. He stuck two ends of the dress in Madison's hands and closed her fingers over them tightly. She was staring at him with tear-streaked eyes.

"You don't let those go. Not for anything. Those are your lifelines. Keep your legs beneath you. You have to land on your feet."

She was still staring silently.

"It's OK.... it's OK..." He told her and slowly nodded.

She rushed into him and hugged him. He sighed and held her closely and suddenly felt tears coming up to _his _eyes as well. He thought of the time he had first seen her, how he felt. How he was stumbling over his words because of how pretty he thought she was. He thought of holding her hand in the dark and huddling together to read the journal they'd found and laying beside her under that imaginary big tree (it was so fat you couldn't see the top). He thought of her getting back to see that tree in real life, and that helped him a little. She pulled back slightly, but kept her hands on his arms.

"I'll come back for you," She told him as a tear slid down her cheek.

Allan smiled and nodded.

"I trust you."

The wind kicked up something fierce and Allan thought there was no better time than then. He pulled her close and closed his eyes and their lips met, and the wind kicked harder, and he pulled her even closer. The chill on the roof was growing colder, but he felt warm beside her. He could have kissed her for the rest of his life and been happy.

The door to the roof burst open. The RICs were spilling out of it in great numbers.

"Go," He told her.

She did.

Watching the pink dress float away, he could only think of Madison's life and how it would go and who she would meet and what she would become. He imagined her getting old and buying the house she'd grown up in. He saw her building a swing off the big tree in the back for her kids to play on and a little dog house beside it for the family pooch. He could see her kids smiling and happy; hugging her and asking if they could stay outside just a little longer. He saw her husband cooking burgers on the grill. His face almost looked like Allan's.

They were on him then--the RICs--, pulling him down to the ground, grabbing his throat with their hands and squeezing. Allan looked up at the sky; it began to take on dark edges. He was scared to death, but he thought of Madison and her tree and it calmed his nerves.

The world swam away from him.

Only the black remained.


	13. Rewakening

When he woke up, his knowledge consisted of only two things: One, he knew he was himself, although he didn't know his name, or even a vague idea of what "himself" looked like; and two, that wherever he was, was very white. And very bright.

"No, wait a second," He told himself as his eyes adjusted to the room. His head spun as he sat up and let the details around him fill in. It wasn't really that white, _or _that bright. In fact, it seemed to be quite _green _wherever he was. "Am I... dead?" He asked to no one in particular and instinctively pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. He didn't feel cold, and that was good. His hands dropped to his sides and found the soft bedding beneath him. He looked down and around and realized with a sudden rush of terror that it looked like he was in a prison cell. A toilet hung from the wall opposite his cot; there was no doors or windows, just a panel of glass wall that revealed a larger room behind it. He hopped off the cot.

"Hello?" He shouted and made two more discoveries. He was barefoot, because the floor sent a cold rush up his body, and he was dressed in an ugly, prison-orange jumpsuit. _I _am _a prisoner, _he thought and grabbed little fistfuls of his hair. Panic was grabbing his chest: pressing tight against it and making his skin crawl. It was at that moment he realized he didn't even know his own name. He stared at the ground and mentally dug through his thoughts, but nothing was coming to him. "Help!" He yelled in fear and began pounding on the glass wall. No one was outside it. No one was coming.

A sudden moment of clarity hit him. He began to remember who he was in a foggy sort of way, like they way you'd remember an old TV character: not a star, but someone important enough. His face started to take on form in his mind, and he quickly felt for a spot behind his ear. His fingers traced a scar there that ran in a semi-circle. "I know that scar!" He stated happily as a name began to formulate in his head--slowly--like the numbers came to you on the-

"Good morning, Allan," a voice broke loudly through his thoughts. The suddenness of it disoriented him and he almost stumbled into the wall, but caught his balance at the last moment. He looked around, but didn't see anyone or any_thing_ that could have possibly made that noise. "You will find your Companion Cube beneath your bed," The voice--a woman's--came back. He looked down and saw a little square under the cot with a pink heart on it. "If you get lonely, do not hesitate to tell the Cube your feelings. It will always listen, and never hurt you."

"Who are you?" He asked. At least he knew who himself was now: Allan.

"Your computer terminal has been set up to entertain you with such games as: Tic-Tac-Toe, Minesweeper, and the ever-popular Solitaire," She continued, ignoring him completely. "Your meals will be brought to you three times a day through here." As she finished her sentence, a panel on the wall slid open; a hollow, empty metal square was set in the wall. It closed again. "You will be given one pill after every meal. You will take said pill. If you do not want said pill, said pill will be forced upon you. Your sleep at night will be deepened by the pill, and your body and mind will become the temporary property of Aperture Science Research and Development."

Allan's head spun with all the information that was being jammed down his throat. He put his hands up and looked up at the ceiling. It seemed the best place to look to talk to the voice. "Wait! Please, just stop! Where am I!? And why am I here!?"

"Don't bother yourself with those question, Allan. The facts are this: You are here. That is all the facts. You will forget about those question in time. In time, you will even learn to like it here. Get to know your Companion Cube."

"Please," Allan pleaded, feeling tears dangerously close to the surface of his face, "How long do I have to stay here?"

"The human life expectancy for an American male is seventy-five years and two months. You are approximately twenty-three years. Fifty-two years and two months is the answer to your question."

Allan pressed his back up against the glass and slowly slid to the floor. When he got there, his arms wrapped around his knees and his mouth fell open. The tears had breached the surface, and were strolling down his cheeks in cool streams. He shook his head slowly and a surreal feeling overtook him. It felt like he was dreaming. Dreaming some terrible dream that felt all-too-real and all-too-scary.

"Why?" It was the only question left for him to ask. His voice sounded hoarse and small to his own ears; his emotions robbing it of any strength.

"The questions, Allan. They will go away."

She had told him that, and for awhile, he almost believed her. But they never did. The meals came to him just as she'd said: three times a day. They were slop, mostly. When they'd first started to come, Allan tried his best to guess what they were every time. By the fourth day, he thought about the contents much less, and, instead, just shoveled it into his mouth. By the seventh day, he didn't think about what it was at all. Each meal came with a little white pill, _also_ just as The Voice had said. He didn't want to take strange pills in a strange place, but every time he though of skipping it, or trying to hide it, her voice resounded in his head: _"If you do not want said pill, said pill will be forced upon you."_ He took the pills. At night, he found he only had a ten or fifteen minute window to think before whatever was in the pills put him down. No one ever came to the big glass wall. No one ever talked to him besides the voice, and even _it_ had grown quieter and quieter as the days passed. In the mornings, he'd awake as if he was jumping out of some terrible nightmare, but when he tried to remember what it was, it slipped away from his mind: quickly and quietly. He had avoided the little square under his cot that The Voice had called the 'Companion Cube', but after thirty or thirty-five meals, he found himself sitting Indian-style in front of it and talking. He had to talk to someone. It was better to talk to a cube then yourself, after all. Wasn't it? He wasn't sure.

A beard had started to form around his lower jaw and cheeks. It made his face itch terribly, but he was too afraid to ask for a razor. The Voice had stopped talking to him nine meals ago, which he could only assume was three days. He actually preferred not having it around. It was somehow more peaceful that way. He had decided to name the Companion Cube 'Denise'. The name suddenly hit him one day when he was doing pushups, and he thought it was a rather perfect name. It made his mind search though. There was something about the name that stirred his thoughts, but he couldn't grab hold of what it was. Denise wasn't the only thing that could make his brain swim. When he though of The Voice--the sound and tone of it--he felt a sense of familiarity, but whenever things seemed to begin to make sense, a big red circle surrounded by black appeared, and he quickly shoved the thoughts aside.

One more thing could get him thinking, but that one was the hardest of all to close the door on once he opened it. He thought of _her_. Of course, he didn't know her name, or even if 'she' was real, but when he _did_ think of her, it almost made him smile. Whenever he'd get close to remembering something though--just like with The Voice--an image would pop into his head, only this time it wasn't a red circle, but a pink dot: slowly floating away from him till it was gone and lost forever. One time he woke up and _that_ was what he could remember from his dream. A pretty girl with a warm smile and a pink dot floating away.

The Voice had said the questions would go away, but they never did.

Monotony.

Wake up. Meal one. Pill one. Wait. Meal two. Pill two. Wait. Meal three. Pill three. Wait. Sleep. Repeat.

He had kept track of the days, somehow that seemed important to him for some reason. He counted the meals, and could only hope they were being sent to him at normal breakfast-lunch-dinner intervals. It had been twenty-one days since he'd woken up. Twenty-one days of the same routine, and not a thing had come back to his mind. He was Allan. That was about the extent of his knowledge. On the twenty-first night, he went to sleep like the twenty before it: laying on his back on the cot with his hands folded behind his head; imagining being somewhere else; hoping he'd wake up and the whole thing would just be a nightmare; thinking of the warm smiling girl until he fell asleep.

He prayed that night before he slept though. And he wished. And he prayed some more. And he wished some more. He wanted to go home. He wanted it to be over. He wished. He prayed. He hoped.

The twenty-second day came the same as all the others: three meals; three pills. Nothing changed.

The twenty-second night he didn't pray or wish or hope for anything. He didn't even think. It was easiest that way: easiest just to let life happen. The suffering, he found, was his own doing. If he didn't fill his own head with hopes and ideas and thoughts of what a better life could be, it didn't seem so bad in the room. He was fed. He had a roof over his head. What more could he want? It was the way to deal with it. The only way. Acceptance.

The Voice had said the questions would go away. They did.

He was just Allan the prisoner. And he was home.


	14. Epilogue

Madison came out of the bathroom quickly, wiping her hands dry on her jeans. She rounded the corner into the living room and sat down on the armrest of the couch. On the television, the news reporter was still making small talk with the anchors back at the station. "Nothing new?" She asked, knowing the answer, but asking anyway. Her mother's mouth curved into a wan smile as she shook her head. Madison let out a breath of air and nodded; it was what she was expecting. It had taken them three weeks--_three weeks!_--to finally take action. Madison had to bite her lip and grab a hold of her own arms to stifle her anger. Still, after all this time, the thought of it made her as mad as hell.

Her older sister, Emily, came into the room and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. Madison looked up at her and she cupped her chin with her other hand. "How are you doing, Maddy?" She asked with the same wan smile her mother had given her not fifteen seconds earlier.

"Fine, I guess... still no word on him," She told her older sister and looked down at the ground. _And I'm starting to think there's not going to be._

"Did they give the names of the other two?"

"No," Madison answered but it brought her no hope. "But it doesn't matter. We found two other people when we were in there. A guy and a girl. Just like the reporter said the police got out of there."

"Well... keep your chin up, kid. A little hope never hurt anybody," Emily said and sat beside their mother on the couch.

Madison stood and folded her arms. "Call me in if anything happens," She said and walked into the kitchen.

Things had been such a blur since that day on the roof, she _still_ barely knew where she was sometimes. If it wasn't for her Dad's constant cigar-stink, she might have forgotten she was in her parents house at all. In fact, she'd been living there for the last three weeks, but it still felt like a strange place to her. She'd moved out a year earlier, and coming back now--especially after everything that had happened--she felt like a guest. Not like the little baby girl who'd chipped her tooth on the end table when she was five. Or the budding young twelve-year-old singer who'd sang 'Amazing Grace' while her Dad played piano and smoked rolled cigarettes. She felt out of place, and the sad thing was, she knew where her place was. _I should have never left you. _

She circled around the big oval table in the kitchen and pushed open the back screen door. The quiet summer night greeted her with the chirping of crickets and the cool breeze coming in from Struble Lake to the West. The sun was giving up; the moon was starting to climb. Her father sat on the wooden porch swing beneath the kitchen window puffing on a fat cigar and staring out at the soft, purple, twilight sky. He looked over at her when she came out and grinned, and for a second she saw his face. _Allan... where are you?_

Her dad stubbed the cigar out and motioned to her. "Come here Maddy-Baby," He cooed and scooted over on the swing. Her father was the one person in the world who could make her feel like a kid again. She couldn't keep herself from slightly grinning as she walked over to him and sat on the swing. He draped his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.

"Dad, you smell like a cigar."

"Do I ever not?" He teased and gave her a wide grin.

"I guess not," She told him and sighed. He gave her a long look, studying her face in that way that only he could. "I really liked him Dad. I don't think... I don't know if I did the right thing."

Her father pulled her closer. "That boy saved you, Maddy. He chose your life over his own. There's nothing more noble a man can do. Don't be sad for him, baby girl. Be proud of him."

Madison sighed. She kicked off her shoes, brought her knees up to her chest and let her head fall against her father arm. She looked at the big oak tree silhouetted against the purple night sky and thought of him. _I'll come back for you_, she had said. _I trust you_, had been his reply.

Falling through the sky was about the scariest thing Madison had ever done in her entire life. The initial jump hadn't been so bad, but once she was out in the open, with nothing but the air around her and the dress above her to keep her company, the world seemed to grow huge around her and made her head spin in circles. Breathing felt funny. Not breathing felt funny. Her heart was pounding in some strange pattern she'd never heard. She probably would have let go of the ends of the dress out of sheer panic, but his words clung to her mind like magnets: _You don't let those go. Not for anything. Those are your lifelines. _The words repeated over and over in her head like a chant, and every time she heard them, her hands made tighter fists around the dress ends. It felt like she was falling fast. _Too_ fast. The foggy surface below, with its tree tops poking through, rushed up at her. She didn't know what was under that fog, but she knew she didn't want to fall through it. If only the fog was like a big pillow: soft and squishy and perfect for catching falling girls. But then she was sailing through the fog, and the tops of trees became the middles of trees. The surface--the _actual_ surface--showed its ugly face. She screamed then. Screamed loud and shrill, but it didn't matter. No one was around to hear her. The trees stuck bony, naked hands out to grab her, but, miraculously, none did. The ground awaited though: deep browns and light greens and bushes and leafs and twigs and stones; she saw them all! _Keep your legs beneath you. You have to land on your feet. _His words came back to her and she focused. She could remember how stupid and useless she thought her bare legs and feet looked jutting out in front of her; how silly and ridiculous she thought it was going to be when her body was effectively squished into nothing, and heronly defense had been her dumb legs.

But then she hit the ground--dumb legs first--and nothing happened. She stood in the forest for a second, dazed, with her mouth agape and her heart racing a thousand miles an hour. The pink dress came down on top of her, smothering her under its hefty size.

From that point on, life was a series of fleeting images for awhile. She remembered running through the forest. She remembered looking back at the massive building behind her that towered over the trees and disappeared up into the fog. She could still see the look of the woman's face on the highway that she'd first come across. She had burst out of the forest and directly in the path of an oncoming car, and was damned lucky she didn't get squashed right there and then. But she didn't; the woman had swerved and slammed on the brakes and almost hit the guardrail on the opposite side, but only wound up skimming it. She remembered crying her eyes out and telling the poor woman the whole story and pointing back towards the building telling her that Allan was still up there. She remembered the ride in the ambulance and the kind old man at the hospital that kept telling her it was going to be OK. That's when things came back into focus in her memory.

The police didn't believe her. About anything! Not about the RIC robots or the MAT machines or the portal gun or GLaDOS or... or even Allan. They thought she had been raped or drugged up or both, and she was delusional and building stories from the ground up to protect herself from 'the truth'. They brought shrinks in to the hospital room, and they didn't believe her either. Her parents didn't even believe her! The whole world might have been able to convince her she was nuts, except for the fact that she was wearing the proof around her calves: the leg shocks. The cops gave each other funny looks and took them away from her. She cried that night, thinking they were going to throw them away and pretend they never existed. They didn't though, and when she was released from the hospital a few days later, the cops wanted to talk to her all the time. They had questions galore, but she only had one answer for them. _Go save Allan! Please! _She had screamed at them and pleaded with them. They told her they'd checked the place out, but it had been abandoned for years and didn't have a trace of anything or any_one_ inside it. She called them liars and threatened to go back herself if they wouldn't help him.

It might have all ended that way: her constantly yelling and fighting with the cops to do something; the cops telling her to calm down and threatening her with 'institutions'; the fat, balding psychiatrist constantly trying to convince her she was hiding some sort of repressed memory. But after a week, a report came down from a few counties up about a missing college kid named Allan. The cops starting paying attention to her after that.

The rest of the story she only had gotten from the news and a few scattered policemen that would still talk to her after she had berated them for two weeks about saving Allan. Glados was a clever girl. The bottom five floors of the building were dummy floors: dark, useless, rotting floors with nothing but broken tables, peeling wallpaper, and broken office supplies inside them. But after the fifth floor--and Madison had no clue where or what secret passage they'd had to find to get there--things were 'sinisterly wicked' and 'ingeniously constructed' as all the newspaper headings had said.

That was all yesterday when they had first entered the building. This morning, they pulled out the first two 'victims'. A guy and a girl; both remained nameless for their own protection. Madison thought of those two poor people they'd found up high in the building: The man the RICs had been modeled after, Matthew; and the girl who Glados had copied for her own body, Cassandra. She was happy for them, but they weren't him. They weren't... Allan.

Her father stirred beside her and she pulled herself out of her daze to look up at him. The old bear was sleeping. Madison smiled and kissed him on the cheek before carefully slipping away from his arm and standing up. She stretched and headed back into the house. When she walked into the living room, she sensed the mood immediately and her heart froze.

"What is it?" She asked fearful of the answer. Neither her mother or sister spoke. She looked at the TV, the ticker scrolling by on the bottom read: BREAKING: One body found. Police say the body has been identified as a young male-

The ticker scrolled on, but Madison turned her head and held her breath. _That's it_, she thought and tears swelled in her eyes. Her mother and sister were on her, squeezing her and kissing her and apologizing, but she could only think of him. _Allan... I'm sorry._

Her family was good to her. They consoled her in every way a person could hope to be consoled, but Madison wanted to be alone. She swore to them she was OK and slipped out the back door again. She stuck her hands in her pockets and walked barefoot through the grass and up the low slope of the yard to the big oak tree. It was there waiting for her, as she knew it would be. She sighed, sat beneath it, and laid back on the grass; her hands lacing behind her head for a makeshift pillow. Crickets sang behind her, and the stars twinkled above her. The soft purple of twilight was deepening to the dark blue velvet of night. She cried then. Until she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she knew she was actually dreaming, because Allan was sitting there; his back to her as he gazed into the night sky, which had finally turned black. _What a cruel dream, _she thought and rubbed her hands against her eyes to clear them. When she sat up, life felt too real to her to be a dream. And Allan was still there. She tried to say something, but no words came. He looked back at her and smiled and at that moment she knew it wasn't a dream.

"You're the girl of my dreams," He told her as he swiveled around to face her. He looked her up and down. "You're actually much prettier than in my dreams."

"This... _this_ isn't a dream?" She asked and put her hands against the sides of her head.

"Well, I hope not. If it is..." His face grew distant with remembrance. "Please don't wake me up."

"Allan?" She began to believe it. Her heart fluttered and her blood felt hot and prickly under her skin. "Really?"

"That's what everyone keeps calling me," He answered and smirked. "I don't... I don't remember much of anything, though, so... I don't even know _your_ name."

She got to her knees and scooted close to him. She brought her face up close to his and studied it. It was him. He was alive.

"I-" He began to say, but she hugged him so suddenly and strongly that the wind flew from his lips. He laughed and hugged her back. "Were we... boyfriend and girlfriend or anything?"

She pulled away and brushed tears from her eyes. She looked deep into his and searched them. "You really don't remember me?"

"Don't take it personally. I don't really remember anything."

"What happened?"

"Heh, seems like an easy question, right?" Allan began and ran his hand through his hair. "I've been asked that by more cops and lawyers and people in suits today than you could possibly imagine. I don't really have an answer. Like I said, I don't remember really anything. I woke up and there was a voice telling me what I had to do. So I did those things. That's about it."

Madison was shocked. She leaned in and tilted her head. " You don't remember Glados?" He shook his head. "Rick? The portal gun?" He kept shaking. "The... the journal? The x-ray glasses? The leg shocks?" He kept shaking. Madison could beat around the question she actually wanted an answer to all day, but it was inevitable. "And... you really don't remember... _me?_" He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at her. He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," He told her. "I know you're important to me though." She listened carefully. "Look, I don't even know what my parents look like. I _honestly _can't remember anything. The one thing I dreamt about when I was in that place and was able to remember... was you. I knew what you looked like almost before I knew what myself looked like. I have spent the last fourteen hours talking to cops and being checked out by doctors, but the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about finding you. When they told me some girl had been begging them to come after me for weeks... I _knew _it was you. The girl of my dreams."

Madison smiled and wiped more tears away; there seemed to be an endless stream of them.

"The doctors said there is nothing wrong with me, but I don't think I'm _ever_ going to remember things before... before I woke up in that room that day. So I'm asking you for help, I guess. You know how long it took me to convince the cops to bring me to you?" Madison looked towards the house and saw two officers sitting at her kitchen table and drinking coffee with her dad. "I just... I kind of _want_ to remember, you know? I don't know if I ever can or ever will, but I know I want to try."

Madison hugged him again, it was hard not to. She still couldn't believe he was there. Really there. "I thought you were dead. The news reports..."

"Yeah, they told me about that before they brought me over here. Can you believe there was two people right next to me the entire time? Some girl they got out of there and a guy... he's the one they found dead."

It suddenly made sense to Madison. The guy, Matthew, was Glados' model for her human-machines. Allan had become the new model. It didn't make sense for her to keep him around so she... she killed him. _Glados. Are you still alive somewhere?_

"What are the cops going to do about the building?" Madison asked, suddenly aware of the threat of Glados.

"I'm not sure. Apparently they're finding all sorts of things in there, and, according to the police commissioner, they haven't even scratched the surface. I kept telling them about the voice but... they think it was in my head. They didn't find anyone else--yet--that could have been doing the talking."

Glados was alive, Madison knew then. Hiding probably: biding her time until she was ready to strike. The cops wouldn't do a thing about her before it was too late. She had to be stopped, but Madison had no idea by who. She looked at Allan. Could the two of _them _do it? Could they stop her?

"You never answered my question before," Allan cut into her thoughts. She looked up at him. "Were we boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Madison put aside the thoughts of Glados for the moment; there would be a day when she was ready to think about that, but that day wasn't today. She smiled and shook her head. "No."

"Oh," Allan said sounding surprised and a bit disappointed. He thought for a moment and then looked up at her frowning. "We're not... brother and sister are we?" She laughed and shook her head. Allan look confused. "Oh... well... then who are we?"

Madison looked deep into his eyes and found the answer. She stuck her hand out. "I'm Madison," She told him, realizing they'd have to start fresh again. He looked down at her hand, then up at her eyes and smiled. He shook it. She let a deep breath of air out and laid back on the grass. He watched her for a moment, curiously, and then scooted next to her and laid beside her. They looked up at the sky together.

"This feels familiar," Allan said and looked over at her. "That's a good thing."

The sky was the inky black of night, but the stars poked shining holes all over it. They watched it, picking out constellations; the big oak tree behind them watching over them. Madison knew then that things were going to be alright. They had both been through hell and back, but at least now, they had each other. The cool breeze started to become a cold breeze, so they scooted closer together. Allan's hand found hers. She smiled.

They talked all night.

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The End

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( 0 )

_"Are you still there?"She asked into the darkness of the building. No answers came. "Still alive,"_ _she said to herself melodically._

_"Still alive."  
_


End file.
